Cast: Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Amanda Peet, Sarah Steele.

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Screenwriter: Nicole Holofcener.

Holofcener’s fourth film proves the director a force to be reckoned with and firmly establishes her a talent to watch. Please Give, set in New York,  looks at what happens when a family – second-hand furniture store owners Cathy (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) and their teenage daughter Abby (Sarah Steele) – move into the apartment that formerly belonged to ailing old lady Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert). With Andra relegated to living next door with her granddaughters, radiologist engineer Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and beauty therapist Mary (Amanda Peet), the family tries to ingratiate themselves with Andra and her granddaughters with mixed results.

The film begins at Rebecca’s workplace with a montage of close-ups of various breasts being examined, ‘tubes of potential danger’ as Rebecca calls them, which sets the tone for a film which looks at mortality and life as, in turn, funny, sad and embarrassing.

Sadness and resignation is what permeates Rebecca’s life when we are first introduced to her, as she goes about her lonely daily life looking after Andra without a word of thanks. She invites sympathy from nearly everyone around her including one patient, Mrs. Portman (a great turn from Lois Smith, seen elsewhere in True Blood playing Sookie’s grandma), who sets her up on a  date with her grandson Eugene. Hall once again proves here that she is an actress of great sensitivity and subtlety, and one who’s also pretty good at an American accent.

Cathy (an ever-excellent Keener) meanwhile seems outwardly successful, a caring woman with a great business and a charming if often crude husband (an equally excellent Platt). But we soon find out that the guilt of what she does, taking furniture from dead people and selling it on for extravagant prices, is eating away at her. In one scene a disapproving customer calls Cathy and Alex ‘ambulance chasers.’ This combines with the fact that she has also got a lovely apartment for a good price because Andra is soon to die. To make up for this she dedicates herself to giving to the poor and researching volunteering opportunities. But this comes at the price of neglecting her own daughter Abby, much to her anger. So when Abby wants to get a pair of designer jeans for $200 Cathy replies :“$200, when there’s 40 homeless people on the street!�

This sense of white liberal guilt is cleverly mined by Holofcener in a hilarious scene in which Cathy attempts to give some food to a black guy on the street who indignantly tells her that he is “waiting to get a table.� The film then constantly  questions how much we can live with the contradictions in our life and still feel ok about them.

The film’s main strength lies in the fact that the characters are complex, flawed and utterly human. Alex for instance is a thoroughly likeable family man but he too goes down the mundane path of having an affair with a younger woman, Mary. Despite doing this we are able to forgive him as Platt conveys his sense of regret and shame.
Mary herself is one of the most unlikeable characters. Direct to the point of insensitivity, she refers to her grandmother as a ‘bitch’ and has no qualms about discussing her imminent death and what Cathy will do with the apartment afterwards while grandma is still in the room. But we see her motivations and so can sympathize with her as we learn that she blames Andra for causing the early suicide of her mother, whilst we also see how cranky and rude Andra is, (excellently and comically played by Ann Morgan Guilbert) constantly complaining and never appearing grateful to have her granddaughters around her. One gets the feeling that she was always like this with them, and even the conscientious Cathy has to admit how awful she is. Similarly Abby (Sarah Steele) is outrageously rude and sulky, a typical teenager, but we also see that she is clearly just looking for more attention from Cathy and is battling her own insecurities.

You really do feel for these characters and want them to succeed so when Rebecca does eventually get a nice date and goes with Andra, Eugene and Mrs. Portman to ‘see the leaves’ it is a moving moment as Rebecca finally realises that there is beauty in the world. This film then should win Holofecener much praise and acclaim, as well as invite comparisons with idiosyncratic US filmmakers such as Tamara Jenkins, Tom McCarthy, Woody Allen (at his peak) and Alexander Payne. So if you want a film with incisiveness, heart, laughs and a brilliant cast, you need look no further.

By Priscilla Eyles

Please Give is out 18th June courtesy of Sony Pictures.