"I had no guts and I complained until I met a man who had no heart—the most important part"

Please Give (Holofcener, 2010)

Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give is a simple yet well-made character study centering on a family of New Yorkers—Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) and their 15-year-old daughter Abby (Sarah Steele). Kate and Alex run a vintage furniture shop, where they sell furniture they purchase fairly cheaply from people who have recently inherited it from a deceased relative. They have also purchased the apartment next door in anticipation that their neighbor—91-year-old Andra (Ann Guilbert)—will soon kick the bucket and they’ll be able to expand their domicile. This being public knowledge, they have a rather awkward relationship with Andra’s granddaughters—Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), who takes care of Andra, and Mary (Amanda Peet), who has already written the old lady off and can’t be bothered to deal with her.

In summary, Please Give sounds like your typical contrived indie film that is quirky for the sake of being quirky. What saves it from that fate, however, is its smart reflection on the ways that capitalism underpins and undercuts our relationships with others. Kate has a predilection for giving money to every homeless person she encounters—a habit that annoys her teenage daughter, who is angling for a pair of $200 jeans. Feeling guilty about the way she makes a living, and no longer satisfied giving only money, Kate seeks out ways to give back to others. But her efforts to volunteer fail miserably because she can feel nothing but pity for others and the emotion overwhelms her: “It’s just so sad.”

Kate’s failures to connect to others in ways not grounded in monetary exchange highlight the pity and disgust inherent in the notion of charity. Though her family members are perplexed by what they see as Kate’s humanitarian efforts (“She wants to save the world!”), the film makes clear that her altruism is tainted by repulsion. She is disgusted by the people she sees on the street—not by the social and economic circumstances that lead to the epidemic of homelessness, for example.

Interestingly, the dirty, deformed, or simply imperfect body emerges as a marker of humanity that the fairly wealthy characters at the center of the film largely try to erase. Abby, like many teenagers, is plagued by acne and tries to overcome it with fancy spa treatments and facials. Alex comments on one of Kate’s toes that is so bent it is “almost horizontal” and tells the toe to “go the other way! It’s not too late!” Mary maintains a perfect tan by going to tanning beds, but doesn’t want anyone to know that her color is artificial. And the film opens with a montage of mammograms (Rebecca is a radiology technician). We see close-up shots of breasts (or, as Rebecca thinks of them, “tubes of potential danger”) while listening to “No Shoes” by The Roches—a song about people with missing body parts: “…I had no butt and I complained about it all and then I met a man who had no balls.”

At the heart of Please Give—and, despite its sharp criticism of the characters, this is a film with heart—is an examination of what it means to be human in a world governed by commodity exchange.