Please Give
Cinema Nova, 12/10/2010
Status: Behind by 7 films
It continues to astound me how many films fail the Bechdel rule (which states that there must be more than one female character and they must talk to each other about something other than men). I’ve always liked that writer-director NICOLE HOLOFCENER’s films (Lovely and Amazing, Friends With Money) have always passed.
Please Give is a character-driven study of a few NYC residents - Rebecca (REBECCA HALL, Frost/Nixon, Vicky Christina Barcelona), a good girl plain-Jane and her callous, but glamorous, sister Mary (AMANDA PEET, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) care, respectively, well and reluctantly for the elderly grandmother who raised them. The grandmother lives next door to CATHERINE KEENER (Being John Malkovich), OLIVER PLATT and their daughter. Each character struggles with the things that middle class city dwellers struggle with - morality, economics, fidelity, loneliness, luck-guilt. That’s pretty much it, but the craft is in the clever writing, complex characterization and nuanced performances, rather than the plot.
It’s a small, but very well crafted film. It won’t appeal to everyone - nothing blows up and very little that’s dramatic happens - but it’s a story that really appeals to me. I also get a little kick out the fact that if Bechdel’s rule was reversed, Please Give would fail - there are only two male characters and they do not speak to each other - how tremendously subversive!
