They mean well, maybe, in 'Please Give'

The toxic content of good intentions are on full display in Nicole Holofcener's "Please Give," a literally wonderful, poignant and original take on how living decently seems to require so much energy.

Antiques dealers Kate and Alex (Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt), suffering under the cosmic weight of Manhattan, buy up the old furniture of people who've passed and sell it for as much as they can. This concept comes to bother Kate, who isn't exactly Goldman Sachs but does have a conscience and starts handing out money to compensate.

Both Platt and Keener are at the top of their games, especially after their characters buy the apartment of their next-door neighbor, Andra (Ann Guilbert, Millie on "The Dick Van Dyke Show"), who gets to live there until she dies, a day no one is hoping lies too far in the distance. Andra's granddaughters (Amanda Peet and the fabulous Rebecca Hall) add to the psychodrama while Kate and Alex's daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele), worries about pimples.

Holofcener ("Walking and Talking," "People With Money") is a trenchant observer-critic of modern mores and social cluelessness, a kind of Oscar Wilde-meets-Billie Holiday: There's a melody playing at the center of things, but the most interesting stuff is not what's on the page but in the music she creates with bent notes and spaces.

Holofcener and Keener are kind of like Scorsese and De Niro, a natural pairing of like minds and refined power. Although no one gets hurt. Not physically.