Review of Please Give (2010) by Thomas W — 02 Oct 2010

As individual character studies, Please Give works; but when you put it all together and try to summarize an entire film out of the 90 minute runtime it isn't as successful. We have an assortment of characters who's lives interact on a single floor of an apartment building in New York City.

Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are) and Oliver Platt (Kinsey, A Time to Kill) are a married couple who are waiting for their elderly neighbor (a very good Ann Morgan Guilbert) to die so they can tear out some walls between their apartments and make a single dwelling.

The elderly lady is looked after by her two granddaughters Amanda Peet (Something's Gotta Give, Melinda and Melinda) and Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Frost/Nixon) -- Peet, a massage therapist, is more flightly and less involved than Hall who is a radiology technician who takes X-rays of women's breasts all day long (this is a montage that opens the film -- unusual and one I have never seen before).

The married couple sells furniture they get cheap from dead people and Keener's character eventually begins to feel some guilt for taking advantage of those who have just lost a loved one. There is quite a bit going on in the story -- their paths cross in a few ways and I don't want to give any of it away.

I actually highly enjoyed the character development in Please Give because they all felt truly alive and human. The one character I could have done without is Keener and Platt's teenage daughter played by Sarah Steele (Spanglish) who is a selfish, spoiled, shameful child (watch for the scene with the $20 and your jaw will drop -- the nerve of this hateful child!).

Please Give refers to Keener wanting to volunteer her time and money to those with less than her. Nicole Holofcener has given us strong female characters before (and I believe almost all of her work stars Keener) and this one is no different in that regard.

I think it is better than her last -- Friends with Money -- and on par with her other offerings, Lovely & Amazing and Walking and Talking. Holofcener's movies are about the people in them, not necesarily about what they always do.

The movie does NOT tie-up very well and a lot is left unsaid and/or unanswered but I think this is intentional because what we actually give/get out of something is up to our own self.