Breasts are the first image in Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give. Old breasts, young breasts, perky, and sagging breasts. They all being submitted to the somewhat humiliating but completely necessary procedure which is the mammogram. This opening scene sets the mood for Please Give, a wonderful little New York film that proves a film written, directed, and centered on women does not have to be about romance.
In Please Give, Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) are partners in marriage and in business. They run a successful vintage furniture shop in the Village where they sell furniture from the recently deceased. Kate pays distraught relatives hundreds of dollars to take the furniture off their hands and then resells it in her shop for thousands, but her profiteering is starting to take a toll on her conscience.
Kate also feels guilty because she and Alex have purchased the apartment next door which belongs to Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert), a cranky old woman in her nineties. When Andra dies, Kate and Alex will knock out the adjoining walls and expand their apartment, and Kate is trying not to show how eager she is for Andra to die. Out of guilt, she invites Andra and her granddaughters Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and Mary (Amanda Peet) over for dinner to celebrate Andra’s birthday, and she freely gives out twenty dollar bills to all the homeless people on her street while refusing to buy two-hundred dollar jeans for her daughter Abby (Sarah Steele).
The characters in Please Give are full of contradictions; sometimes acting admirable and detestable in the same scene, and the film is successful in its goal of knocking down female stereotypes. Kate is relatable to many middle and upper class people who enjoy their upscale apartment and comfortable lifestyle but feel conflicted. Even if their success comes from something less morally questionable than Alex and Kate’s shop, they feel guilty because there are people living on the streets or in a wheelchair or hidden away in a nursing home.
At her best, Kate tries to help other people, but unfortunately her guilt has warped her so much that she can only care for people by pitying them. In one telling scene, Kate volunteers to play basketball with young adults with Down Syndrome, and instead of sharing in their joy of the game she bursts into tears. She does not see fellow human beings on a basketball court having fun. She sees their Down Syndrome and feels sorry for them, missing the point of volunteering altogether.
Two characters that initially had me worried in the film were Andra’s granddaughters Rebecca and Mary. With a lesser writer or director, Rebecca would have been the total angel and Mary the self-centered devil woman. Instead, both women have realistic strengths and flaws. While Rebecca is sweet and kind, she is extremely shy, passive, and unsure of herself. She is single not because she is unattractive or looked over but because she is not confident. When a man at her workplace flirts with her, she does not give him a definitive yes or no. Instead, she stays quiet until he moves on with his day.
Mary on the other hand is self-centered to the point of stalking her ex’s new girlfriend to see why he chose her. She obsesses over the girl’s muscular back and why her ex finds it attractive. Her self-centered nature is not all bad, though. She has no trouble speaking her mind, and she doesn’t let anyone judge her. She also doesn’t go after something she doesn’t want, which explains why Alex wants her even though he thinks she is a “b****.”
The last character to delve into is Andra. Some movies portray the elderly as being sweet, senile, and above reproach. The writers and filmmakers condescendingly pat the old man or woman on the head and say, “Oh, they don’t mean that. They are just old.” Please Give has the courage to show Andra as unlikable because it forces the audience to ask themselves if the tragedy of Andra’s death wouldn’t be outweighed by the excitement of a bigger apartment.
As strange as it sounds, the opening scene is a metaphor for the women in Please Give. Kate, Rebecca, Mary, and Andra are as varied, flawed, and real as those breasts. The decidedly non-sexual portrayal of the female body establishes that this is a film about women from a woman’s perspective that will appeal to the art crowd, not the rom-com crowd. Please Give seals Nicole Holofcener’s place as one of the best female filmmakers working today, right next to Sofia Coppola and Kathryn Bigelow, and I cannot recommend this film enough to fans of character-driven dramas.
DVD Bonus Features
Special features include a behind-the-scenes featurette, outtakes, a Q&A session with director Nicole Holofcener, and previews for other releases from Sony Pictures Classics.
"Please Give" is on sale October 19, 2010 and is rated R. Comedy, Drama, Indie. Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener. Starring Amanda Peet, Ann Morgan Guilbert, Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Sarah Steele.
