Nicole Holofcener is back! Or The PLEASE GIVE thread
Nicole Holofcener is back! Or The PLEASE GIVE thread
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/9/04
Nicole Holofcener is back! Or The PLEASE GIVE thread#1
Posted: 1/24/10 at 4:47pm
Who is that? A wonderful filmmaker who actually makes films for adults. Her LOVELY & AMAZING is really one of the best indies of the '00's. Anyways, she's got a new movie that's getting good buzz at Sundance, from Salon.com:
After emerging from Nicole Holofcener's "Please Give," an edgy, somber, beautifully written Manhattan fable of guilt, shame, infidelity, death and real estate, I got to dig my cute little rented Hyundai out of a snowbank on a Park City back street, which was no doubt good exercise but felt like a scene from a very different kind of movie. At one point in "Please Give," a memorably misanthropic, foulmouthed and borderline-slutty character named Mary (played with a marvelous lack of inhibition by Amanda Peet) tells her ailing grandmother, "Things don't get better. They only get worse." This is true enough when you're talking about a 91-year-old woman's circulatory system and vision, which is the ostensible subject of Mary's diatribe. But is it true, I asked myself, with those gorgeous huge snowflakes dropping on top of me and the ski slopes of Park City apparently hanging illuminated in midair above me, is it really true as a general principle?
I'm not actually sure that's what Holofcener thinks, in fact, although it seems to be a sentiment she sympathizes with, at least to a point. Mary belongs to a distinctively New York social network that's on the verge of implosion, thanks to a set of factors that should be familiar to Holofcener's viewers by now: capitalism, middle age, sex, good intentions. Mary's plain-Jane sister Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) is the principal caretaker to their grandmother, who has become the tenant of the couple next door, Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt). They are quite literally waiting for Granny to die so they can knock down the interior walls, double the size of their apartment and live in near-suburban luxury with their acne-ridden teenage daughter (Sarah Steele).
Kate, who is in some sense the story's central character -- certainly Keener gets the most screen time -- is plagued by unmanageable, almost pathological guilt, not just about waiting for the old lady to buy the farm but about anything and everything. She gives $20 bills to homeless people, tries to volunteer with seniors and disabled kids (but ends up weeping in the ladies' room instead) and feels tormented about the business she runs with Alex, which involves buying furniture from estate sales for relatively little and then reselling the better pieces at a ridiculous markup. Of course, it's also possible her bad vibes emanate from a more intimate source, such as her poisoned relationship with her daughter, or the fact that Alex has been visiting Mary at the spa where she works for a little one-on-one physical therapy.
Holofcener is frequently understood as a director of "women's films," and to some extent she embraces that role: She opens "Please Give" with a hilarious and startling montage of naked breasts, in all imaginable shapes and sizes, being squished into a mammography machine. (Rebecca is a medical technician at an ob/gyn clinic.) But she's light years away from Nancy Meyers, thank God. Holofcener has no interest in punishing or even judging Alex for his infidelity, for instance. Kate is losing her **** and no fun to be around; in the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld, stuff happens.
I see Holofcener as something closer to a younger, female-centric Woody Allen, meaning that she's a social satirist whose essentially dark vision is cloaked (sometimes thinly) as comedy. "Please Give" is a bit more conventional in presentation, and perhaps a tad less ruthless, than her last black-comic foray into upper-middle financial and sexual anxiety, "Friends With Money." But she remains a dramatist of unusual gifts, unmatched in American cinema at the moment, finely attuned to the mystery and terror that lie just below the surface of affluent modern existence.
Whole article here
From Sundance: Nicole Holofcener is back!#2
Posted: 5/1/10 at 3:43pmBumping because I saw Please Give yesterday and it was one of the best, most articulate films I've had the pleasure of viewing in a long while. Every detail and nuance is practically letter-perfect. I'm hoping that awards-members have long memories and acknowledge the spectacular work done by Amanda Peet, in a fearless performance, as well as Nicole Holofcener's crisp, urbane screenplay. A real breath of fresh air in a year that got off to a very poor start, film-wise.
From Sundance: Nicole Holofcener is back!#2
Posted: 5/2/10 at 2:50amThere was a great write-up of Holofcener (with Catherine Keener) in the LA Times, as well as a review of the movie Please Give. It was a good read and definitely got me interested in the film.
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/9/04
From Sundance: Nicole Holofcener is back!#3
Posted: 5/2/10 at 10:47amI saw it this weekend too, and enjoyed it but wasn't overwhelmed the way I was with her LOVELY AND AMAZING. But still very good and yes Amanda Peet was very surprising.
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/13/03
From Sundance: Nicole Holofcener is back!#4
Posted: 5/4/10 at 11:11amI am a huge fan of FRIENDS WITH MONEY, an underappreciated film. I have the DVD and every time I watch it, I see new things. It's Anniston's best work, and Joan Cussak and especially Frances McDormand are just wonderful. The entire subplot about Frances's paralysis re her dirty hair is inspired and in a way heartbreaking. Terrific movie, makes a great double feature with, say, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS.
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