I've Changed My Plea to Guilty Because Freedom Is Wasted on Me
Just saw Please Give. I think if my life were turned into a movie I’d want Nicole Holofcener to direct it. Her movies are filled with characters I personally relate to and characters I find despicable, much like my life. The themes in this film are things that I constantly think about, namely our culture’s obsession with youth, beauty, guilt, and fear.
Catherine Keener’s character, Kate, is the guiltiest person I have ever seen onscreen. She has plenty of reason to feel guilty: she’s an ambulance chaser by trade and in her personal life. Kate buys and sells the furniture of dead people at estate sales for a living. She also bought the apartment next door from her elderly dying neighbor with the hopes of expanding.
Kate does much to assuage her guilt. She constantly gives to charity and looks for volunteer opportunities, but nothing seems to work. She’s too sensitive and pessimistic to work one-on-one with people in need. All her charitable efforts are for naught since she sees the world as fundamentally unfixable. She is only trying to make herself feel better.
This makes her sound like a horrible person but Catherine Keener makes her so sympathetic, especially when surrounded with characters that are far less morally complex. The aforementioned next door neighbor, Andra, is a bitter old shrew (played by Ann Morgan Guilbert, who played Grandma Yetta on “The Nanny”). Rebecca, the granddaughter who cares for Andra, would be a saint were she not so gloomy. She administers mammograms for a living and calls breasts “tubes of potential danger.” The film opens with a lengthy sequence of boobs-old, young, large and small-getting pressed by machines.
This sets a pretty morbid tone for the film. There is a particular terror involved with being a woman, the way our bodies turn on us. Whether it’s childbirth or disease or old age. I know men can get sick too, but they need not be annually examined to see if it’s happened yet. Their fertile years don’t have an explicit expiration date. Did you see that fake commercial that Abby Elliot did on SNL a few weeks ago mocking Sally Field’s Boniva ads? All women are inherently weak and very fragile. There doesn’t have to be anything wrong with you to take Boniva; you just have to be scared.
It’s constantly said that men get more attractive as they get older. Beauty fades with age and beauty is currency for women. We see this in Rebecca’s sister Mary, who is her polar opposite, a self-centered, superficial cosmetologist who tans too much. Rebecca tells Mary that tanning beds cause cancer. Mary tells Rebecca that standing too close to the microwave causes cancer. The cancer will get you. If it’s not already inside you, it’s sitting on top of you. If it’s not sitting on top of you, it’s just a foot away.
Mary’s fear of getting older and losing her looks is always bubbling up to the surface. She stalks her ex-boyfriend’s younger new girlfriend. She also has a tendency to drink too much and drop truth bombs with absolutely no regard for propriety or other people’s feelings.
It would be easy to hate this character and dismiss her as another beautiful bitch, but Amanda Peet plays her not as someone who is mean because she can be, but as someone who (like her male forbears, Dr. House and John Givings in Revolutionary Road) has experienced so much pain and disappointment that she has just stopped trying to be nice.
Mary bonds with Kate’s daughter Abby, a teenage malcontent with a budding hatred for mankind. Like her father, Abby does not understand Kate’s bleeding heart. All Abby wants are clear skin and an expensive pair of jeans. Mary tries to give her the former and promises that "it's no one's fault; it's hereditary" (a beautiful line coming from someone so damaged by her family). As for the latter, Kate doesn’t see the use in getting Abby the jeans since there is SO MUCH HURT IN THE WORLD.
Here I’d like to mention the events surrounding my viewing of this movie. On my way through Union Square I was accosted by two pretty girls around my age. One was holding a “FREE HUGS” sign. The other begged me to hug her. When I acquiesced, she said “Now you have to take the sign.” Are you kidding? I replied. Then I went into the theatre (where a gay bashing occurred years ago and was not well-handled by management) and was immediately guilted into giving a dollar to a children’s hospital. I did it because everyone in line with me did, because the woman doing the begging was so aggressive. The people behind me wouldn’t give any money and immediately I thought “what assholes they are.” Then I became envious. They had the balls to do what I did not. The charity woman even applauded them for standing up to her. I really regretted giving away that money since I only did it out of guilt and I needed the dollar just a few minutes later. After the movie, I went and bought some new clothes. Nothing fancy but I needed them and you know what? They made me feel good about myself.
I’m not even sure if that is supposed to be the moral of this film, but it seems to me to perfectly illuminate the paradox of the modern American woman. Giving to charity makes me feel used and powerless. Buying myself a new outfit makes me feel good.