Please Give

Nicole Holofcener writes and directs Please Give, a tart, touching indie drama about generosity and selfishness. Holofcener (Lovely & Amazing, Friends With Money) explores familiar territory in her latest film, showing the comedy and pathos of haves and have nots in Manhattan.

Women's breasts are readied for scanning by mammogram technician Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) in the film's striking opening scene. Pale, serious Rebecca comforts and assists an unending parade of patients. A compulsive giver, she's not receiving much. Rebecca lives with her elderly grandmother and rarely goes out, not even to see the fall foliage upstate. To her, breasts are neither beautiful nor repulsive, but "tubes that can get infected."

Holofcener shows the interplay between two Manhattan families, reflecting America's uneasy balance of wealth and poverty. Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) are a wealthy couple that resell contemporary antiques in their city showroom. The two live and work together all day long, an arrangement bound to strain any marriage.

Adding to that tension is Kate as she plunks $20 bills into the hand of any homeless person she meets. Opportunities to profit and feel guilty about it abound as Kate and Alex acquire estate furniture bargains from grieving adults. Meanwhile their 15-year-old daughter Abby (refreshing Sarah Steele) begs for a pair of $200 designer jeans.

Living next door is 91-year-old Andra (Ann Guilbert). In space-hungry Manhattan, Kate and Alex have already purchased Andra's apartment and plan to expand their living space after she dies. Meanwhile they are genuinely polite to the cantankerous neighbor and her granddaughters Rebecca (Hall) and sexpot Mary (Amanda Peet). Peet (Something's Gotta Give; Martian Child; 2012) portrays Mary as the newest incarnation of needy, needling Andra. She's just as selfish as Rebecca is selfless.

Kate and Alex's birthday party for Andra, reluctantly attended by Rebecca and Mary, offers a high point of comic realism. It is here where Alex's mid-life crisis begins to manifest.

Several performances delight in this often uncomfortable film. Guilbert delivers pathos along with her barbs. Lois Smith is radiant as wise Mrs. Portman, a patient who befriends Rebecca. Thomas Ian Nicholas plays Mrs. Portman's fresh-faced nephew Eugene.

Keener has starred in each of Holofcener's feature films as a tough yet vulnerable woman exploring life's ironies. As Kate, Keener is so edgy that she succeeds in making moviegoers squirm.

Spiritual teacher Fredrick Lenz once said, "When you do something for someone else, it's for you. When you do something for yourself, it's for someone else." Kate and Rebecca, the two most generous characters in Please Give, finally discover that they are good people who deserve to be happy.

Please Give 2010 / PG-13 / 1 hr, 30 min

Cast Overview: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Sarah Steele, Ann Guilbert

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Genres: Drama, Indie, Indie Drama