When does caring too much become a problem? This question plagues the lives of Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and Cathy (Catherine Keener), two women who have in common the 91-year-old Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert). Andra is Rebecca's grandmother and Cathy's neighbour. Rebecca, a radiology technician, has given up a personal life to take care of her grandmother. Cathy, who owns a mid-century furniture store, can't wait for Andra to die so she can break through the old lady's apartment and expand her own. Rebecca helps people at work; Cathy buys valuable furniture at cheap prices from naïve people who want to quickly dispose of their dead relatives' possessions. Cathy has a family – a husband, Alex (Oliver Platt), and a teenage daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele); she has financial success. But, unlike Rebecca, she doesn't have peace of mind. Taking advantage of people's vulnerability starts taking a toll on her. She starts feeling guilty. We all like to see ourselves as better people than we are and we try to demonstrate (at least to ourselves) our goodness. Cathy tries to assuage her guilt in many ways: she refuses to buy her daughter expensive clothes; she sanctimoniously preaches about helping the homeless. She even volunteers to help the elderly.
Please Give is as much a movie about caring as it is about guilt, in its many forms. Cathy, for all her opulence, only has a happy life on the surface; and Rebecca, without a life, seems to take pleasure from her job and from caring for her grandmother. As the movie opens their lives have started moving in opposite directions: Rebecca meets a potential boyfriend through one of her patients and starts living a bit; whereas Cathy grows more distant from her daughter, going through her rebellious phase, and from Alex, who meets Rebecca's sister, Mary (Amanda Peet), and starts an affair with her.
Please Give is a typical indie comedy/drama: the story doesn't move towards a resolution or climax, it just captures slices of these character's lives at crucial moments. The goal isn't physical, the conflict is wholly internal. These characters wrestle only with feelings, ideas and their social functions: Abby, like any self-centred teen, deals with her pimples, which make her feel like a monster; Rebecca slips into the role of the good granddaughter because there's no one else to fill it. Mary only cares about herself, retaining her beauty and stalking her ex-boyfriend's girlfriend to understand why he dumped her for her (Mary's shallow, unbearable personality may be a clue). Cathy seeks atonement.
Andra, we find out, also volunteered in the past. And yet she's a very spiteful person. Mary didn't like her. We can intimate that Andra has always been a disagreeable person. Her daughter killed herself with pills. Was she fed up with Andra? Did Andra take up volunteering because she felt guilty? Cathy's guilt, in the context of Andra's blaming herself for her daughter's suicide, seems very petty. What she does isn't really that horrible, is it? She tricks people, yes, but, like she says, if not her someone else would. At which point does guilt become just vanity? Some people carry it like a badge of honour. This is Cathy: she preaches to her daughter about spending too much money on jeans, she gives leftovers to the homeless. But she continues to sell expensive furniture that she bought almost for free. This movie is better appreciated if we go prepared to see the irony in it.
In 2010 good dramas were built on invisible, metaphysical goals. What was Hereafter about but the attempt to understand and be at peace with death? What did Another Year show but characters fighting the meaninglessness of life? In Black Swan a ballerina struggled with the most intangible of quests: the search for perfection; and even if I disliked the movie I must praise it for its audacity. Not all characters must have clear, material goals. Please Give follows in this vein in its exploration of the private world of its characters.
This type of plot can make a movie look like a shattered mirror: some scenes shine in themselves, but the whole reflects a fragmented imaged. The solution is having coincidences wrap everything up, like in Hereafter, or just accepting that real life doesn't follow a linear path towards closure. So Please Give feels a bit disjointed, incomplete, but this is more a movie of scenes that float independently in our heads.
The actors, with the help of a witty screenplay, deliver excellent performances, with particular compliments to Catherine Keener and Rebecca Hall. The actors don't light up the screen but that's because the script calls for subtlety rather than theatrics. Steele captures the selfishness of teenagers; Platt does a great job as the husband tired of living with his wife like a business partner. Peet and Guilbert compete for the most annoying personality and it's a testament to their talent that their rudeness and callousness doesn't make them any less fascinating than the others.
I think whether people will like this movie or not depends greatly about their approach to life: those who see the world as a big joke will probably love it. Those who take life too seriously may not like the movie's message. What should the limits of caring be? Ourselves? Our family and friends? The whole world full of strangers? Are we selfish if we don't care about the suffering of others? Or should we carry the world's problems on our back? How we answer these questions defines what we'll get from Please Give.
Please Give is as much a movie about caring as it is about guilt, in its many forms. Cathy, for all her opulence, only has a happy life on the surface; and Rebecca, without a life, seems to take pleasure from her job and from caring for her grandmother. As the movie opens their lives have started moving in opposite directions: Rebecca meets a potential boyfriend through one of her patients and starts living a bit; whereas Cathy grows more distant from her daughter, going through her rebellious phase, and from Alex, who meets Rebecca's sister, Mary (Amanda Peet), and starts an affair with her.
Please Give is a typical indie comedy/drama: the story doesn't move towards a resolution or climax, it just captures slices of these character's lives at crucial moments. The goal isn't physical, the conflict is wholly internal. These characters wrestle only with feelings, ideas and their social functions: Abby, like any self-centred teen, deals with her pimples, which make her feel like a monster; Rebecca slips into the role of the good granddaughter because there's no one else to fill it. Mary only cares about herself, retaining her beauty and stalking her ex-boyfriend's girlfriend to understand why he dumped her for her (Mary's shallow, unbearable personality may be a clue). Cathy seeks atonement.
Andra, we find out, also volunteered in the past. And yet she's a very spiteful person. Mary didn't like her. We can intimate that Andra has always been a disagreeable person. Her daughter killed herself with pills. Was she fed up with Andra? Did Andra take up volunteering because she felt guilty? Cathy's guilt, in the context of Andra's blaming herself for her daughter's suicide, seems very petty. What she does isn't really that horrible, is it? She tricks people, yes, but, like she says, if not her someone else would. At which point does guilt become just vanity? Some people carry it like a badge of honour. This is Cathy: she preaches to her daughter about spending too much money on jeans, she gives leftovers to the homeless. But she continues to sell expensive furniture that she bought almost for free. This movie is better appreciated if we go prepared to see the irony in it.
In 2010 good dramas were built on invisible, metaphysical goals. What was Hereafter about but the attempt to understand and be at peace with death? What did Another Year show but characters fighting the meaninglessness of life? In Black Swan a ballerina struggled with the most intangible of quests: the search for perfection; and even if I disliked the movie I must praise it for its audacity. Not all characters must have clear, material goals. Please Give follows in this vein in its exploration of the private world of its characters.
This type of plot can make a movie look like a shattered mirror: some scenes shine in themselves, but the whole reflects a fragmented imaged. The solution is having coincidences wrap everything up, like in Hereafter, or just accepting that real life doesn't follow a linear path towards closure. So Please Give feels a bit disjointed, incomplete, but this is more a movie of scenes that float independently in our heads.
The actors, with the help of a witty screenplay, deliver excellent performances, with particular compliments to Catherine Keener and Rebecca Hall. The actors don't light up the screen but that's because the script calls for subtlety rather than theatrics. Steele captures the selfishness of teenagers; Platt does a great job as the husband tired of living with his wife like a business partner. Peet and Guilbert compete for the most annoying personality and it's a testament to their talent that their rudeness and callousness doesn't make them any less fascinating than the others.
I think whether people will like this movie or not depends greatly about their approach to life: those who see the world as a big joke will probably love it. Those who take life too seriously may not like the movie's message. What should the limits of caring be? Ourselves? Our family and friends? The whole world full of strangers? Are we selfish if we don't care about the suffering of others? Or should we carry the world's problems on our back? How we answer these questions defines what we'll get from Please Give.