I saw a new independent film called Please Give, directed by Nicole Holofcener. The film drops you into the lives of two New York families, who are connected through their apartment building. The film explores themes of beauty, guilt, lust, adolescence and family through its memorable, very real, characters.
The film begins with a series of mammograms being given, saggy breasts of all shapes and sizes are put on the plastic shelf one after the other. Right away I knew the film was not going to show conventional beauty. There are two sisters in the film, Rebecca is a mammogram technician, spending her days seeing breasts as ‘tubes of danger’, and Mary, who spends her days working at a spa giving facials. Their opposing connections to feminine beauty are apparent just from their jobs. Rebecca is not concerned with how she looks and makes fun of her sister for being such a slave to the beauty system. The sisters live together and this constantly comes up through comments about going to the tanning bed, eating microwaved food, drinking too much and ‘hitting the wall’ the term Mary uses for getting to the age where your beauty is lost. The sisters are opposites, just living together because they are each other’s only family.
The other family in the story is Kate, a mom who is racked with rich guilt, a dad, Alex who is trying hard to hold onto his youth, and a teenager, Abby who just wants her skin to be blemish free and to have a great pair of jeans. This family is waiting for their neighbor to die so they can expand their apartment. Their neighbor is Rebecca and Mary’s grandmother. Kate and Alex have a vintage furniture store and she becomes consumed with the ethics of buying people’s furniture when they die, paying little for it, and then selling it for a huge profit. She feels like she is stealing from the grieving family members and she does not understand why her husband does not feel the same way. To make up for her guilt, she spends most of the film giving money and food to the homeless people who live on her street and saying, “I’m sorry.” She tries to volunteer but cannot see past the sadness she is surrounded with. She is unable to accept that the sorrow in the world, and her ease and wealth within the world, can exist together.
The whole film is full of scenes that feel so real; they are almost shocking to see on the American screen. Watching Kate work in a store full of beautiful, expensive objects and listening to the New York customers come in and discuss them, how shelves are so ugly they are interesting. Listening to an old woman talk about her youth, all the while being obliviously ride to her caretakers. Seeing a teenage girl’s pimpled face being worked over while getting a facial, watching sisters watch TV together and, being unable to express their feelings, silently give each other physical affection.
Please Give is a fresh look at how Americans and specifically New Yorkers can be showed. Everyday life is all it’s ugly beauty. Flawed people loving flawed people. Giving what you can.
