Please Give

A couple in New York who deal in second-hand furniture buy cheaply from the homes of the dead and sell dear in their shop. They have already bought the flat of the elderly woman next door; when she dies they will knock through and enlarge their own. Meanwhile they get to know her two granddaughters. The film is not interested in moral guilt. It is interested in how little that guilt achieves: Kate hands money to everyone on the street, signs up to volunteer and works hard at feeling better, and does not give up the business. Rather than resolve the contradiction, the film sits in it. The form is everyday comedy: short scenes, overlapping talk, characters needling each other. Nicole Holofcener wrote and directed. She is known for films about the squeezed conscience of the middle class, and Catherine Keener is close to a permanent fixture in her work. Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt and Rebecca Hall are in the cast, with Ann Guilbert as the neighbour. Who it is for: viewers who like character comedy and films that look at middle-class New York hypocrisy. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. The film is made almost entirely of small moments and nobody makes a big decision.