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Four of the top women in US independent cinema teamed up for an entry Tuesday at the 60th Berlin Film Festival, "Please Give", about privileged New Yorkers ridden by guilt.
Actresses Catherine Keener ("Being John Malkovich"), Rebecca Hall ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona") and Amanda Peet ("Igby Goes Down") star in the new film by Nicole Holofcener, who scored a modest hit in 2006 with "Friends With Money".
The picture, which is screening out of competition, sees Keener as Kate, a successful vintage furniture dealer who preys on grieving families to buy their deceased loved ones' belongings at a discount.
Meanwhile she and her husband are waiting for their elderly Manhattan neighbour to die so they can take over her apartment and expand their already spacious digs.
But Keener's character begins questioning her ways while watching how the cantankerous neighbour is cared for by her selfless granddaughter (Hall).
The granddaughter, however, has a callous sister (Peet) who begins having an affair with Kate's husband -- in the throes of his own midlife crisis.
Despite the soul-searching, the film drew hearty laughs here for a wry, witty script and a few clever visual gags.
"You can find humour in almost anything," Holofcener, who made her name with directing stints on the hit television shows "Six Feet Under" and "Sex and the City", told reporters.
The 50-year-old Keener, who has acted in all four of Holofcener's features in between higher-budget ventures such as "Capote", said the shortage of good roles for women in Hollywood contributed to the camaraderie on the female-dominated set.
"We kind of all just fell in love with each other really," she said.
Holofcener said after a string of movies about the rich and unsatisfied, she was ready to break out and do something new, for example a thriller.
But she said modest pictures like hers often allowed more creative freedom by flying below the radar when studios scrutinise their accounting.
"It was low-budget so I got to do what I wanted," she said.
The Berlin Film Festival runs until Sunday.
