People feel guilty for many reasons, some legitimate and some not. They have many methods for assuaging this guilt. Catherine Keener, as Kate in "Please Give," tosses food and money at panhandling or homeless New Yorkers. She's obsessed by these street people, and by her re-sale shop, and she has little time for her 15-year-old daughter and even less for her husband as he drifts into an affair. "Drifts" may not be a completely correct term, but he's obviously ready to veer into infidelity as soon as he receives the correct signal and she appears uninterested in noticing.
"Please Give," which also includes Oliver Platt as Alex, the drifting husband, Sarah Steele in a terrific performance as the daughter, Abby, and Rebecca Hall (Rebecca) and Amanda Peet (Mary) as the neighbors, who live with their virago of a grandmother, Andra, a fine portrayal by Ann Guilbert, her hair dyed "menopause red," as one of the movie characters describes it.
Nicole Holofcener, who wrote and directed, has shown a keen eye for character development, especially among women, though she's a little fuzzy in terms of New York neighborhoods. Alex and Kate, well-defined characters, supposedly live on the Upper West Side, where their shop is located, but there are shots on Lower Fifth Avenue and other sites that do not jibe. Anyway, Alex and Kate are kind-of ghoulish scavengers. They check the death notices, then go to the apartments of the deceased, buy the furniture and accessories from a grieving relative and sell them at a New York price
They are greedy and acquisitive, and excessively cheap in other areas of their lives, as many people are. They also have their eye on Andra's apartment next door, with expansion of space and of value uppermost in their minds. So they do favors for her, even as they resent her presence, with a birthday party among the worst examples. Rebecca has her own problems, working as an X-ray technician giving mammograms and finding a social life almost impossible. Mary gives massages, spends a lot of time in beds, tanning and otherwise, and finds avoiding a social life almost impossible, though she is not in an active avoidance mode.
By the way, the opening sequence is hilarious, in a very black-humor way. We see Rebecca pereparing women for their mammograms, flopping a large number of breasts onto the machine while credits are rolling and, in the background, the Roches sing "No Shoes." Dark humor at a high level. Mary segues from business to pleasure with ease.
Steele's portrayal, and Holfocener's creation, of the 15-year-old Abby, makes her a fascinating character. She's on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, battered by both, trying to find out where she belongs, and getting no help from either -hood or either parent. But time helps in many situations, and by the time we get to an interesting, perceptive curtain line, we all may be getting somewhere. And so may Rebecca, who loosens her guard just enough to make room for Eugene, a sensitive, slightly cliched but still lovely piece of acting by Thomas Ian Nicholas.
A good movie, making us look at various relationships through a mature lens.
"Please Give" opens today at the Tivoli
–Joe