Please Give Movie Review

By Anne Brodie Apr 30, 2010, 16:30 GMT

Kate (Catherine Keener) has a lot on her mind. There’s the ethics problem of buying furniture on the cheap at estate sales and marking it up at her trendy Manhattan store (and how much markup can she get away with?). There’s the materialism problem of not wanting her teenage daughter (Sarah Steele) to want the expensive things that Kate wants. There’s the marriage problem of sharing a partnership in parenting, ...more

Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt play a couple of vintage furniture storeowners; their job is to befriend the children of dead and dying people and buy up their estates.  They underpay, hiding their excitement at finding vintage gems and jack the prices sky high for upscale shoppers. 

We meet Keener’s character Kate as her conscience starts biting her.  Friends of the deceased, lawyers and fellow merchants come in to see what she’s done with the pricing, and it becomes clearer with each new haul that she is a parasite, not necessarily in business terms but in the way she sees herself.

Kate hopes to give back by handing twenties to street people but causes offence by offering leftover dinner to a black man outside a restaurant, assuming he’s homeless when he’s simply waiting for his table.  She commits another faux pas during one of her volunteering outings, crying over mentally challenged young people playing a game of basketball.  Giving back isn’t easy for her.

While she sobs over disadvantaged strangers, her relationship with her daughter suffers.  They butt heads at home and in public, and she has little mercy for the girl, who responds with hurtful sarcasm.  Their relationship is disintegrating fast while Kate tries to ease her conscience elsewhere.

Her husband Alex (Platt) has no qualms at about their business ventures and he gets along wonderfully with their daughter, encouraging her to love herself.  He seems to be doing everything right until they invite an elderly next door neighbour (Ann Guilbert) and her granddaughters to dinner.

These girls are alarmingly out of synch with each other and their grandmother – one (Amanda Peet) wants her to die, already and the other (Rebecca Hall) can’t do enough to help her.  Alex enjoys a spirited exchange with he one he calls the bitch and they begin an affair.

These are snippets from the lives of four New Yorkers, ordinary people dealing with ordinary things, navigating their way as best they can.  The script and direction are subtle and effective, but this film hangs on the capable shoulders of Catherine Keener, a superb actress who creates recognisable, visceral moments.  She is positively transcendent as Kate.

For any of you who remember Ann Guilbert best as Millie, from the Dick Van Dyke Show, it is encouraging to see her still out there working, putting heart and soul into the job, at age 81.

The film looks into areas of life that aren’t often addressed in film, including our attitudes to old people, and the disabled.  We learn about people, both young and old, with stubborn ideas that fly in the face of common sense and what drives them.
And although the film isn’t about life in a Big Way, it is a satisfying piece of art about our lives in little ways.  It shares themes with Holofcener’s Friends with Money, which is about accepting your limitations and making something out of your life anyway, even if you feel distanced from social norms.  And what are they anyway?  The film gives us plenty to think about, it’s unsettling and heartbreaking, and so much like life.

35mm drama
Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener
Opens: April 30
Runtime: 90 minutes
MPAA: Rated R for language, some sexual content and nudity
Country: USA
Language: English