PLEASE GIVE

Year: 2010
USA: Sony Pictures Classics
UK: Sony Pictures Releasing
Cast: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Ann Guilbert, Lois Smith, Sarah Steele, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Kevin Corrigan, Scott Cohen, Elizabeth Berridge, Rebecca Budig
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Country: USA
USA & UK: 90 mins
USA Rated: R for language, some sexual content and nudity
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language and infrequent sex
USA Release Date: 30 April 2010 (Limited Release - New York and Los Angeles)
UK Release Date: 18 June 2010

Synopsis

Kate (Catherine Keener) has a lot on her mind. To start off with there’s the ethics problem of buying furniture on the cheap at estate sales and reselling it at an inflated price at her trendy Manhattan store (and how much mark up can she get away with?). There‘s the materialism problem of not wanting her teenage daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele) to want the expensive things that Kate wants. There‘s the marriage problem of sharing a partnership in parenting, business, and life with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) but sensing doubt deep down. And there‘s Kate‘s free-floating 21st century disquiet - the problem of how to live well and be a good person when poverty, homelessness, and sadness are just outside the door.

Plus, there‘s the neighbours: cranky, elderly Andra (Ann Guilbert) and the two granddaughters, Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and Mary (Amanda Peet) who look after her. As Kate, Alex, and Abby interact with the people next door, with each other, and with their New York surroundings, a complex mix of animosity, friendship, deception, guilt, and love plays out with both sharp humor and pathos.

PLEASE GIVE is writer/director Nicole Holofcener‘s perceptive, and devastatingly funny, take on modern life‘s contradictions, good intentions and shaky moral bearings.