Kate (Catherine Keener) and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) are high-class scavengers who buy up furniture at estate sales, then mark up the items at their chic Manhattan antiques emporium. A decent sort, our heroine worries endlessly and needlessly over the ethics of her profession and compensates by handing out money and food to every homeless person she encounters and by discouraging her teenage daughter (Sarah Steele) from buying $200 jeans. To add to Kate’s woes, her neighbours – a cranky geriatric, a cold mammography tech (Rebecca Hall) and a bone fide skank (Amanda Peet) - are horrendous.
Nevertheless, even among self-absorbed New York folk, neighbourly urges can kick in; Kate slowly befriends this bickering family unit, despite the fact that her husband is running around with one of them behind her back.
Someday, Nicole Holofcener is going to make a film that blows minds and sees her crowned the girl Woody Allen. Please Give is not that film but a bittersweet, thoughtful doodle about the perils of trying to live well in the western hemisphere. As ever, the director and regular muse Catherine Keener prove a dynamic duo and the ending is a tart watercooler talking point.