From The New Yorker:
Guilt Trips
May 3, 2010
by David Denby
The characters in “Please Give,” directed by Nicole Holofcener (“Lovely & Amazing,” “Friends with Money”), are freshly perceived, intelligent but confounded New York neurotics. Holofcener is a virtuoso of awkward domestic scenes. Among deftly launched jokes, the film explores the nature of benevolence and the exhausting but inescapable necessity of family loyalty. Holofcener structures the movie like a finely wrought short story. Fiftyish Kate (Catherine Keener) and her husband (Oliver Platt) run an antique furniture store. They buy from the children of dead people, which makes Kate feel like a vulture. The couple lives next door to a ninety-year-old grouch, Andra (Ann Guilbert). Andra’s granddaughter Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) suffers her ill temper with grace. Her older sister, Mary (Amanda Peet), is a rude alcoholic. Holofcener has an unusually intimate way with female characters. The men in her films tend toward puppyish. Life-goes-on movies usually don’t electrify the senses, but this one stimulates moral imagination. Holofernes hints that benevolence may be fuelled by guilt or self-hatred.
