Please Give Please Give a Chance

I caught writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give (Sony Pictures Classics, April 23) last night, and while not perfect it’s a really pleasant, enjoyable thing — a quiet, deceptively simple New York movie that nestles you up against its bosom, and leaves you feeling like you could just trip along wherever with her characters. Like her previous films (Walking and Talking, Lovely & Amazing, Friends with Money), it’s a humanistic/realistic relationship ensemble that evidences a great touch with actors. Not starving for paychecks, Holofcener works plenty in television (Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, et al), but at some point it would likely behoove her to dig into a single-character work, something with a more singular, subjective point-of-view. (And if she did that with frequent collaborator Catherine Keener, look out.) Studios, meanwhile, would be wise to team Holofcener with some of their best drama scribes; it would be a good match.