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FILM REVIEW: ‘Please Give’ leaps into urban ethical dilemma for couple Bill Fentum, Jul 7, 2010
PHOTO COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
In “Please Give,” Kate and Alex (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt) are a couple struggling with ethical issues in their lives.
By Bill Fentum Associate Editor
Please Give Rated R for language, some sexual content and nudity
Married couple Kate and Alex (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt) make their living snatching up furniture at estate sales for deceased older people, then selling it for a mark-up at their trendy shop in downtown New York.
Since business is going well, they buy two adjacent high-rise apartments. They plan to live in one unit and let the 91-year-old widow next door finish out her days before they break down the walls and remodel.
To a lot of us, the couple may sound like vultures. But right or wrong, the arrangement is reportedly somewhat common in Manhattan, where large, affordable space is nearly impossible to come by. And as for their furniture business, are Kate and Alex really any worse than, say, an ambulance-chasing law firm?
Please Give is a sly comedy-drama that poses more than a few sticky questions about contemporary ethics and morality. Writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s approach doesn’t sermonize, condescend or look for quick fixes to the problems—and that’s a blessing.
Kate never says so, but she clearly struggles with a guilty sense that her comfort depends on the misfortune of others. To compensate, she routinely hands out money to disheveled strangers on street corners and volunteers her spare time at a nursing home and a school for disabled youth.
Is she looking for redemption? Sure, but so far she hasn’t found it. In her depressed state, meeting so many people in need only leaves Kate more miserable than ever.
Alex isn’t much help. Their marriage, lately, feels just like their business partnership: smooth but lacking in passion. Their 15-year-old daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), suffering low self-esteem over a terrible case of acne, seems almost oblivious to her parents these days. Then again, she may be more aware than she lets on.
Sound heavy? Wait until you meet that widowed neighbor, Andra (Ann Marie Guilbert). She wallows in self-pity and makes life miserable for her two unmarried granddaughters.
The youngest, Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), is a mammogram technician by day and in the evenings a visiting caretaker to Andra. Her older sister Mary (Amanda Peet), a facial specialist at a Manhattan spa, is as conceited her grandmother, with an even more hostile edge.
Ms. Holofcener’s screenplay first brings these six unhappy people together in a disastrous birthday party for Andra—hosted by Kate and Alex in a futile attempt to show they aren’t just waiting for her to pass on. Then the players continue to intersect, revealing insecurities in ways that are usually enlightening and not always easy to see coming.
There’s little room for resolution here. If this were a faith-based drama, Kate would come to see her acts of generosity are more than just a way to feel better about herself. Others would change too, or even face punishment of a sort for some pretty terrible mistakes.
But this isn’t that type of movie.
Instead the characters remain mostly unsure where to turn for meaning and direction in their lives, though in the end most of them are still actively searching. It’s frustrating, perhaps, but not without a ray of hope.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
Alex isn’t much help. Their marriage, lately, feels just like their business partnership: smooth but lacking in passion. Their 15-year-old daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), suffering low self-esteem over a terrible case of acne, seems almost oblivious to her parents these days. Then again, she may be more aware than she lets on.
