SYNOPSIS:
Kate (Catherine Keener) has a lot on her mind. There’s the ethics problem of buying furniture on the cheap at estate sales and marking it up at her trendy Manhattan store (and how much markup can she get away with?). There’s the materialism problem of not wanting her teenage daughter (Sarah Steele) to want the expensive things that Kate wants. There’s the marriage problem of sharing a partnership in parenting, business, and life with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) but sensing doubt nibbling at the foundations. And there’s Kate’s free-floating 21st century malaise—the problem of how to live well and be a good person when poverty, homelessness, and sadness are always right outside the door. Plus, there’s the neighbors: cranky, elderly Andra (Ann Guilbert) and the two granddaughters who look after her (Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet). As Kate, Alex, and Abby interact with the people next door, with each other, and with their New York surroundings, a complex mix of animosity, friendship, deception, guilt, and love plays out with both sharp humor and pathos. PLEASE GIVE is writer/director Nicole Holofcener’s perceptive—and devastatingly funny—take on modern life’s contradictions, good intentions and shaky moral bearings.
REVIEWS:
In PLEASE GIVE Holofcener again introduces us to a number of female characters; some doing their best to take care of others and another pair who selfishly conform to their own needs. Catherine Keener, unlike her usual Holofcener appearances, gets to play the most giving of the bunch, who along with her husband buy furniture from the deceased to resell. To counter her increasing guilt sheconsistently helps out the homeless population and begins looking to volunteer for the less fortunate. Equal to her generosity is a mammogram technician who takes care of her grandmother living next door to Keener. She has a sister who only sees the mean in grandma and can’t wait for her to die and Keener’s daughter with bad skin who wants to compensate for these genetic blemishes with expensive clothes.
Holofcener always gives us more to chew on than originally meets the eye in her films and she writes female characters with an intelligence,sensitivity and realism that blows the Sex and the City foursome away any day of the week. Not quite sure how we’re supposed to interpret the replacement of philanthropy with materialism, but it’s an interesting way to open up the conversation without condescending to what the right point of view is supposed to be. efilmcritic.com
Holofcener’s films may not be visually dazzling but they always sound exceptional—few writers are more consistent at crafting sharp, witty and credible dialogue. Listening to the banter in PLEASE GIVE feels like eavesdropping on natural conversations, shaped and selected by a skilled storyteller. That same care is reflected in the uniformly flawless ensemble cast. Every performer finds exactly the right way to play characters fleshed-out with recognizable (and most likely relatable) imperfections. Intricately plotted but executed with the wide open possibilities of life itself, PLEASE GIVE offers its audience much to consider but doesn’t come packaged with tidy moral lessons. It’s a movie made for and about adults, at a time when the concept is becoming increasingly rare. There are many reasons to be thankful we’ve got Holofcener around, PLEASE GIVE will remind you of them all. chicago.metromix.com
