Please Give

admin | June 4, 2010 | Comments (0)

DIR: Nicole Holofcener • WRI: Nicole Holofcener • PRO: Anthony Bregman • DOP: Yaron Orbach • ED: Robert Frazen • DES: Mark White • CAST: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt. Rebecca Hall, Ann Guilbert, Lois Smith, Sarah Steele, Thomas Ian Nicholas

Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give is a heart-warming, subtle film about the lives of two very different New York families.

Instead of a formatted narrative, Please Give felt more like an eventful cross-section of the characters’ stories. Rebecca, a shy radiology technician, devotes much of her time to her cantankerous elderly grandmother Andra. She cleans her home, cooks and cares for Andra at the expense of her own social life. Her beautiful sister Mary is much less selfless and, when she’s not popping spots as a cosmetologist, she spends her time stalking her ex’s big-backed girlfriend. Andra has a somewhat macabre arrangement with her neighbours Kate and Alex, a middle-class, middle-aged couple. They bought her apartment on the condition that she can live in it until she dies.

Kate is wracked with guilt because her financial security is set against the backdrop of the poverty in New York. So much so, that she unsuccessfully volunteers for a number of causes and donates her designer lipstick to the less fortunate, much to the dismay of her fifteen-year-old daughter, Abbey. Kate’s shame is also due to her and her husband’s vintage furniture business being so profitable, this is because all the discount stock they accumulate is mostly from the families of deaths in the area. In the meantime, Abbey desperately wants to be rid of her acne and is courting a pair of two-hundred-dollar jeans while her father, Alex, is busy elsewhere. Sex, love, death, facials, dodgy furniture and dog poo, these characters have a lot to deal with as they search for balance in their lives.

This film features some really great performances, with Ann Guilbert stealing the show for being the most convincing angry old woman I have ever seen not shouting at a Dublin Bus driver. Sarah Steele was also very enjoyable as the charismatic Abby. Although Catherine Keener was great in the role, Kate becomes quite grating. The focus of the plot seemed to shift from Rebecca to her in the second half of the film, leaving much of Rebecca’s character development up the imagination of the audience. Kate neither had the depth nor the likeability to shoulder the direction of the story.

There are some truly beautiful visuals in this feature. The most dramatic of which is the turning of the leaves, an aesthetically stunning metaphor and some great advertising for the state of New York as a holiday destination. Although slow-paced at times, the strength of both the writing and the characters keep the film engaging. The plot goes to some heavy places but still manages to sustain the humour throughout. A thoughtful, sentimental and insightful piece of cinema, Please Give is definitely worth a viewing.

Gemma Creagh

Please Give is released on 18th June 2010

Rated 15A (See IFCO for details)
Please Give – Official website