Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
8/4/10
While
there are exceptions, you can argue that what separates the blockbuster
from the indie is that the blockbuster is about telling a story and the
indie is about observing behavior. It's not just often hard to explain
WHAT an indie is about, but even WHO, as a group of vaguely connected characters
drift through a pivotal period in all their lives. A good indie,
like Nicole Holofcener's Please Give, can be like a Magic Eye picture:
you look at it, you like it, but what you're really trying to do is figure
out the pattern. And once you see it, the whole experience has a
way of growing in your mind in retrospect. I did, in fact, like Please
Give a lot more 24 hours after I saw it than I did as the credits rolled.
It's about a lot of different things; family, mortality, illness, career
choices, poverty and prosperity. But in the end, I feel it's mostly
about the fact that everyone's glass contains about 50% water and 50% air.
And which of those things you're looking at when you see the glass makes
all the difference. Skillfully understated performances carry the
day, and Holofcener's script is filled with the sort of dialog that's not
terribly interesting unless you listen to it really closely.
Alex
(Oliver Platt) and Kate (Catherine Keener) are a husband-and-wife in the
antique business, or the death business, depending on how you look at it.
They purchase the furniture and possessions of the recently deceased from
grieving families who're just happy to be rid of the stuff and then sell
it for a huge profit at their fashionable New York shop. Over time,
while Alex remains firmly in the antique business, Kate's begun to see
it more and more the other way, particularly since they've purchased the
apartment of their elderly neighbor Andra (Ann Guilbert) with intent to
demolish the dividing wall and expand into her side when she dies.
The bitter and hateful old woman is cared for by her granddaughters, or
at least responsible Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), who gives mammograms for a
living. Her self-absorbed sister and roommate Mary (Amanda Peet)
is obsessed with the new girlfriend of an ex, whose clothing store she
browses at every day just to watch her. Both families, including
Alex and Kate's daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), meet when Kate invites them
over for dinner to celebrate Andra's birthday. Mary makes an impression
on Alex and soon they're having an affair. Kate struggles to find
some charitable endeavor to assuage her guilt over the family business
but simply ends up crying her eyes out over each set of less fortunate
people she meets. Rebecca strikes up a tentative romance with the
grandson (Thomas Ian Nicholas) of one of her patients, but will any of
these people ever be happy?
All
of Please Give's characters begin the movie gripped by ennui and
have various levels of success hiding it. Holofcener shows us two
families with two totally different approaches to their emptiness.
It's the tendency of Alex, Kate and Abby to overthink their misery and
actively seek something to fill the hole: sleeping around, charity
and conspicuous consumption respectively. On the other side of the
wall, Rebecca, Mary and Audra don't seem to think much about their issues,
leading to depression, acting out and general crankiness. Audra may
in fact be the meanest old woman in movie history, not that I haven't met
many of her karmic twins in my travels through this world. She's
contrasted with Mrs. Portman (Lois Smith), the patient who takes her cancer
diagnosis with good humor and optimism while trying to grease the wheels
between her grandson Eugene and Rebecca.
But
the storyline that will draw the most interest is Kate's all-consuming
guilt, and Holofcener (and Keener, who is her usual subtly splendid self)
say some very interesting things in these scenes. What's interesting
about the subplot that gives the movie its title is that all of Kate's
efforts to “help” are shown to be futile and more or less beside the point.
She offers her dogie bag to a man waiting in line outside the restaurant
thinking he's homeless. Attempts to read to the elderly and shoot
baskets with the developmentally disabled crash on the runway because she
can't see anything but the tragedy of their circumstances and can't see
why the counselors are asked not to dwell on them. And that nagging
feeling she has throughout the film that she's got to take a particular
valuable item back to the guy who sold it to her at a bargain price...
I won't spoil what happens, but it's a hoot. The point is that Kate's
trying to wash away the emptiness of her success at a job she feels no
emotional connection to through acts of “charity” she feels no emotional
connection to. And nobody's ever going to find happiness through
pity.
I was
also fascinated by the way Mary puts all her misery on the shoulders (literally)
of her ex's new girlfriend. Having someone to hate can really keep
a person's mind off their own problems: whole countries deal with
their problems this way all the time. And Peet, one of my favorite
actresses, does a terrific job showing us how hollow Mary's bravado is,
particularly in the scenes where we see her at work giving facials.
And while her relationship with Alex is an utterly hollow and joyless affair,
the moment she chooses to end it proves that she'd really thought there
was something there. And I liked the way the final, quiet moment
we see between her and Rebecca rephrases their relationship.
In
a movie like this, the cast is tremendously important because you can't
really set a mood without actors. Hall is an actress to watch.
She perfectly summons the head-down forward motion that keeps someone in
Rebecca's situation going, and I wouldn't have been surprised at all to
learn this was someone essentially playing themself. The veteran
Guilbert is also rock-solid at the kind of shut-down hatefulness in which
too many people close out their lives. Platt has been a go-to guy
for a certain kind of upper-class debauchery for years, but it's unusual
to see him play the vulnerability behind that lifestyle, and he's great
here.
This
is the first of Holofcener's films I've seen (she's probably best known
for 2006's Friends with Money, although best admired for 2001's
Lovely and Amazing), and I was really impressed by her command of
the rhythm of day-to-day life when it's not going so well. It takes
work to convincingly portray people who're sad and in denial without boring
the audience to tears, and you do need to approach Please Give from
the right point of view, but I think she pulled it off beautifully.
As
I walked out of the screening, it was interesting to eavesdrop on the other
people exiting and hear how many different takes people had on what they'd
just seen. Because a movie like Please Give is asking you
to do a lot of its work for it, odds are ten different people could see
ten different messages in its tale of two sad families who're briefly intertwined.
It's sold as a comedy and does have some nice laughs, but more than anything
else, it's a chance to sit back, watch a parable hide in plain sight and
think about what it means both for its characters and yourself. It's
an indie thing, and I like it. |
