A scene from Please Give.

The holy trinity of our consumer society: The wanting, the getting, the guilt.

Nicole Holofcener’s new movie, Please Give, is a complex contemporary fable about a group of New Yorkers and the things they fancy: The right jeans, a bigger apartment, a younger woman, a decent friendship. It’s a wonderful movie full of people you wish you knew in real life, and like most of Holofcener’s movies, it’s a remarkable combination of comedy and tragedy.

Catherine Keener stars in Please Give as Kate. She and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) run a vintage furniture store in a trendy neighbourhood in Manhattan. Much of what they sell comes from the homes of dead people; they buy a lot of these items from the impatient adult children of the deceased, who view their parents’ hoarded goods as trash. Kate feels guilty about buying a lot of this furniture for next to nothing; then she feels guilty for selling it in the store at high prices.

Kate is a bundle of guilt. She’s endlessly handing out cash to homeless people and obsessively searching for just the right volunteer position. Kate’s need to do good provides some of the blackest black humour in this very dark comedy.

Living next to Kate and her little family is an elderly woman who is cared for by her two granddaughters, played by Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall. These women and Kate’s family have an odd relationship, because Kate has purchased the old woman’s apartment — and when she dies, Kate can expand her living space. It’s a ghoulish but not unusual real estate transaction in Manhattan.

And it causes friction, as you’d expect. Relationships between the two families become more complex still when Amanda Peet’s character starts flirting with Kate’s husband.

Please Give isn’t about much, but it’s about everything — sex and money, for starters, as well as what we value, what we possess, what we throw away. Holofcener’s story is about growing up and it’s about living and dying and what counts in the end. For all that serious material, it’s funny and it’s unpredictable.

Holofcener’s characters are fully alive, thanks to her writing and her deft casting. Please Give is full of lovely little actor surprises, such as the magnificent Lois Smith, or a cameo from Sarah Vowell, or the Dick Van Dyke Show’s Ann Guilbert, here playing the cranky old lady next door.

Holofcener has made four interesting films for very little money (including 2006’s Friends With Money, 2001’s Lovely & Amazing and 1996’s Walking and Talking). Lately, she has expressed a wish to work with bigger budgets, and one can only hope Please Give is the film that will help grant her wish.

(This film is rated 14A)

liz.braun@sunmedia.ca
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