Irish Film Institute -PLEASE GIVE

PLEASE GIVE

Director: NICOLE HOLOFCENER

90 minutes| U.S.A.| 2010| Colour| Anamorphic| Dolby Digital Stereo| 35mm


With films like Walking and Talking (1996) and Lovely & Amazing (2001), Nicole Holofcener has established a solid reputation for making female-centred comedies that get under your skin. Her latest, which has a wonderful central performance from the director’s regular leading actress Catherine Keener, Please Give is set in New York’s Upper West Side. Keener and her husband Oliver Platt lead a comfortable life dealing in antique furniture they buy cheap from the grandchildren of the recently deceased. Keener feels uncomfortable about the morbid nature of their profession, and even more so about a plan to expand the family’s apartment once an elderly neighbour dies. To ease her conscience, Keener is forever giving away money to street beggars, and one of the film’s comic highlights sees her hosting a near-disastrous party for their doggedly ungrateful neighbour and the two very different grandchildren (Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall) who look after the old bat. A bracing comedy about ethics and lifestyles. Notes by Peter Walsh

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