Movie "Please Give" is a Surprising Satire by Nicole Hofcener

The Nicole Hofcener film "Please Give" wouldn't be half so good if it wasn't for the technical proficiency of the acting, editing, and direction. It's a simple story, if anything about living in New York City can be called simple. A Manhattan family consisting of mother, father, and pimply-faced 15 year old girl strive for the goals that characterize each of the species.

The teen angst is targeted upon two things: getting the right expensive pair of $200 designer jeans and having facial skin free of zits. Her parents are zeroed in on that number one obsession of New Yorkers in all the five boroughs-living space. Kate and Alex, the parents, operate a successful vintage furniture shop which allows for the coveted Upper West Side lifestyle.

Kate's (Catherine Keener) the prototypical middle-aged up-tempo West Side woman-serene, confident, but perched on the cliff of doubt that marks the end of female youthfulness. Her chubby but affable hubby is an intelligent and comfortable dolt, much addicted to the cozy lifestyle, lost in the canyons of a Manhattan neighborhood whose only purpose seems to be the acquisition of material comforts.

Kate, Alex, and teen daughter Abby occupy an apartment next door to nonagenarian Andra (Ann Guilbert). When people die or go to nursing homes, Kate and Alex buy their furniture and sell it at exorbitant (not by NYC standards) prices in their shop. Kate and Alex have bought Andra's adjacent apartment, allowing her to live there until she dies.

That doesn't sound like much of a plot, I know, and it isn't. What may seem to be easily categorized as a "chick-flick" or a flow of "character studies" scores big in mordant human satire, however.

The deceased Andra has two granddaughters whom she raised since they were children. There's "good girl" Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) who cares for grandma and "bad girl" Mary (Amanda Peet) who will be recognized as a beautiful, selfish, nasty, self-indulgent sociopathic woman who recognizes her self-indulgent and directionless equal in Alex (Oliver Platt), prompting them to fall into bed in a tryst that is more about sexual convenience than anything else.

Rebecca is a sentient humanitarian who takes care of grandma; Mary mocks and derides the sensibilities of people less extraordinary than herself. The meager emptiness of Mary's strained self-assertions are underscored by her menial work as a spa worker where she dotes on skin problems.

Don't be put off by this overly analytic review. For audiences fatigued by films of magic and fantasy and superhuman skills, "Please Give" is a down-to-earth antidote. You're invited in from the first frame, even if you live in Peoria. There was only thing that grated on me-the song playing during the otherwise hilarious opening sequence-but that's just me.

"Please Give" is a title derived from the fact that Kate is a guilty successful woman who pays off her debt to the world by giving alms to the homeless. Another title, just as appropriate, could be "Must Love Boobs." Don't worry, as with everything else in the movie, life is not what it at first seems.