Two possible ways of regarding “Please Give”: It’s shallow. Or maybe it’s deeply shallow.
The film by Nicole Holofcener, recently spotted trying to sell us on Jennifer Aniston as a cleaning lady in “Friends With Money,” treats death, dying and adultery with a light touch — but reserves its most profound tone for such central problems as bad facials, finding a good pair of $235 jeans and how much money to give a homeless guy.
Catherine Keener plays Kate, a guiltaholic who keeps announcing how bad she feels about people sleeping in the street. She’s also guilty about her furniture business (which relies on locating value in estate sales and then reselling the goods at a markup) and the impending death of the woman next door to her at her lower Fifth Avenue flat.
Upon the crinkly neighbor’s expiration, Kate’s family will be able to buy the property and expand their meager living space. Her husband (Oliver Platt) tells her not to feel conflicted, but his character quickly falls into question.
The couple’s views are paralleled by those of the old woman’s granddaughters: One of them (Rebecca Hall) is dutiful and caring toward this cranky crone, while the other (Amanda Peet) is a budding alcoholic whose orange perma-tan broadcasts her skin-deep approach to everything. Skin is even her job: Her career is in giving facials — or, in her sister’s words, “popping blackheads.”
To its credit, the movie is grounded in recognizable Manhattan characters and situations. Holofcener is the anti-Nancy Meyers — high praise — burrowing through our dismally cramped apartments and nudging aside the soiled towels to explore how upper-middle-class New Yorkers actually talk and think.
But Holofcener does nothing with this knowledge. The movie has some oddball moments yet isn’t funny. A couple of situations change, but there’s no plot. And although Holofcener is sharp enough to see the amusing side of Kate’s hand-wringing (when she returns a rare vase to the man from whom she bought it because it’s worth far more than what she paid, he promptly drops it), there is no progress on the question of morals, either. Kate can either give money to homeless guys or not, but they’ll still be sleeping on the sidewalks.
The movie doesn’t know it, but it’s not about the good versus the ethically challenged. It’s about narcissism. Kate’s desire to give is rooted not in sharing others’ feelings — if so, she wouldn’t weep at the sight of perfectly content children with Down syndrome — but in a guilt complex that has overtaken her like a disease.
The movie suffers from the same self-centeredness: It presents the old lady’s nonstop bitching strictly as a source of comedy. Not for a moment does Holofcener swing around and ask whether dying might tend to put you in a sour mood.
So: Sneer at the old bag, but give a big hug to the poor woman who is getting her apartment.