Please Give Review: Death and Real Estate

Spring is often considered a throwaway season for movies, haphazardly sandwiched between the glistening splendor of Oscar glory and the mind-numbing thud of summer action flicks. While many theaters are filled to the brim with the latest forgettable rom-coms and slasher fare, this weekend saw the pleasant, breezy arrival of a thought-provoking, dialogue-driven, bona fide character study reminiscent of Woody Allen in his prime. Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give is a simply told, slice-of-life story that contains rather complicated subtext centered around one Manhattan woman’s modern liberal guilt.

Catherine Keener, teaming with Holofcener for the fourth time, stars as Kate, a bourgeois Upper West Sider who runs a successful furniture store with her husband, Alex (the reliable Oliver Platt), and raises her angst-ridden teenage daughter, Abby (an impressive Sarah Steele, also good as the brooding daughter in 2004’s Spanglish). The aforementioned guilt comes into play when we learn Kate and Alex acquire the merchandise for their store from estate sales. In other words, when elderly people with enviable property pass away, Kate and Alex buy their furniture from the grieving family and resell it at a marked up price. It’s a method that has brought them financial security, but has warped Kate into a whirling dervish of altruistic spontaneity to try and make up for the lack of compassion her success is derived from.

She gives the transvestite transient outside their building Chanel lipstick, impulsively doles out cash to random bums on the street, and, in one hilariously cringe-worthy scene, mistakes a slightly disheveled African-American man as homeless and attempts to hand him her doggy bag outside a restaurant. “I’m waiting for a table,” he indignantly responds. Whoops.

Kate and Alex’s method of assuring their comfortable way of life reaches its apex when they buy the apartment next door from its cantankerous resident, 91-year-old Andra (the spot-on Ann Guilbert, who played Millie on The Dick Van Dyke Show), with the plans to take over the space as soon as she dies – which, they have to assume, should be relatively soon. Andra’s two granddaughters – the reserved, slightly gawky mammogram technician Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and the cold, tactless esthetician Mary (Amanda Peet) – are onto Kate and Alex’s plan, which makes for awkward hellos in the elevator (“When she sees you, she sees a vulture,” Abby tells Kate about the docile Rebecca). Rebecca is devoted to Andra and spends much of her free time taking care of her, while the callous Mary practically refers to her as though she’s already dead.

In attempt to relieve some of the tension (and some of her guilt), Kate invites Andra, Rebecca and Mary over for dinner to celebrate Andra’s birthday. This is a pivotal scene in the movie where the entire main cast is in the same room for the first time, and Holofcener’s caustically relatable dialogue gives the characters a chance to express the most important facets of their personalities against one another. New relationships begin to form and pre-existing ones begin to evolve, for better or for worse.

What makes the seemingly threadbare plot of Please Give so engaging is writer-director Holofcener’s ability to juxtapose simple events with complex themes, as the truly realistic characters experience and display most of the incongruous emotions that people in general undergo, but through the particular eyes of self-absorbed, conflicted contemporary urbanites. The film’s eye for detail is impeccable, as devastating realities are discovered via the most minute of exchanges (like Abby’s heartbreaking revelation upon Mary’s flippant “this and that”), and the inevitability of having to accept your life for what it is in the form of an accusatory off-handed remark (a customer in the furniture store refers to Kate and Alex as “ambulance chasers,” a term to which they cannot protest).

Please Give displays a style of film-making rarely seen in today’s cinematic canon: a justifiably talky, character-centric glimpse into a set of lives the audience ends up caring about, without the frills of contrived drama or action. While some may credibly gripe about the fact that nothing much actually happens in the movie, I find it a much more commendable feat to allow such subjects as mortality, marriage, family, self-worth, and, yes, guilt to be addressed without the proselytizing use of earth shattering plot developments. Pitch-perfect performances along with Holofcener’s directorial skill and winning script caused me to feel as though these characters existed prior to the film, and have continued on with their lives long after the credits rolled. For a tragically funny and touching gaze at what arguably makes modern life such an ethically exasperating oddity, Please Give this movie a closer look.