Please Give (***1/2)

Nicole Holofcener’s fourth film as writer director might be her best. Like her last one, Friends with Money, it’s also about money, in a way, though not about friends. Kate (Holofcener regular Catherine Keener) and her husband (Oliver Platt) have money; they make it by taking the furnishings of the dead to resell at a profit. She feels guilty about this, and he doesn’t. The other main characters are sisters whose elderly grandmother lives next door. Neither sister particularly likes the grandmother, who can be blunt. But one sister (Rebecca Hall) feels guilty about this, and the other (Amanda Peet) doesn’t. Holofcener’s last two movies were set in Los Angeles, but she returns to a Manhattan setting here. In such dense locations, where wealth and poverty are closer together, it’s harder to avoid noticing the difference. Kate routinely gives $5 bills to homeless people. She seeks out volunteer opportunities that she doesn’t particularly like but feels like she ought to.

The scene I most remember from Lovely & Amazing, Holofcener’s second film, is the one in which Emily Mortimer’s character asks her boyfriend to critique her figure, body part by body part, as she stands naked before him. This film also stands out in the way it looks at women’s relationship to their own looks. This is primarily, but not solely, seen in the character of the teen daughter, who frets over her body too, but particularly her acne. Wondrously, the actress who plays her looks like, or is made to look like, a genuinely pimpled teen girl. Less believable is the primary sexual liaison in the movie, which serves some story functions but seems unlikely.

These themes all mix in the same kind of character-driven story as in Friends with Money. There is, in the aggregate, less self-absorption on display, but some of that, and some unkindness too. It’s not a great movie for people who want the characters to always be likable, though again it’s better than Friends with Money on that score. However, only the sister played by Rebecca Hall is particularly admirable. The story has a natural ending to it, but doesn’t try to resolve all of the issues it brings up. This is an approach I find quite appealing.

IMDB link

viewed 7/1/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 7/1–6/10