Please Give (2010)

The first scene in Please Give seems to be "a day in the life of a mammography machine," with a progression of older breasts being positioned onto the machine's shelf. It's in-your-face and uncomfortable and, eventually, just a little too much -- which is what I think Nicole Holofcener was going for with the movie as a whole.

I am generally on-board for Holofcener's films: Walking and Talking is a favorite and I also really liked Friends with Money. Here, however, we have no one with whom to identify. There's the successful wife and mother who's going through a crisis of conscience about the used-furniture shop she owns with her husband, which results in escalating attempts to "give back" in ways she's simply not wired for. Her husband is a bland nice-guy who nice-guys himself into an affair. Their daughter is a normal teen -- that is, she's sulky and self-indulgent and seems to live to make her parents' lives hell. We also spend time with a "good girl" milquetoast and her sister, the sexy selfish bitch, who are granddaughters of the family's next-door neighbor who's crotchety and old. I think we're supposed to identify with the milquetoast and the husband -- they're the "nice" ones -- but I can't be sure since I felt nothing for either of them.

I certainly didn't hate this movie, but I felt as though the things I liked were NOT the things I was supposed to like and the things/characters that should've made me nod in recognition were exactly the components I would've snipped out of the story. I spent the whole time feeling as though I was missing the intended message...but coming up with one of my own.

B-