In CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?, Melissa McCarthy gives a stunning dramatic performance in the strange but true story of Lee Israel, an one-time bestselling author of celebrity biographies fallen on hard times, who turns to a life of crime forging letters from famous literary figures such as Dorothy Parker, which she sells to collectors with the help of a boozy friend, played wonderfully by Richard E. Grant.
Lee Israel (McCarthy) is a New Yorker who has made a career out of writing biographies of celebrities such Katherine Hepburn and Tallulah Bankhead. As interest in the celebrities of that earlier time, the one’s Lee prefers as subjects, fades in the 1980s, she struggles to get published and make a living. Lee’s anti-social, brusque personality and heavy-drinking don’t help matters either. When her new project, a biography of Fanny Brice, fails to find a publisher, she is desperate. To stave off eviction, and to cover vet bills for her beloved elderly cat, Lee turns to embellishing or even forging letters from famous writers such as Dorothy Parker and selling them to collectors. Suddenly, she discovers she has a gift for mimicking the style of these literary greats.
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? is filled with wonderful performances, memorable characters, and a story that is by turns outrageous, sad, funny, and surprising.
McCarthy has built her career on comedies since BRIDESMAIDS, with only a few forays into drama. Frankly, I don’t care much for McCarthy’s comedies generally but she is amazing in this dramatic role, and it is such a strange true story. McCarthy makes this prickly, unpleasant character, who is talented but self-destructive, into someone you care about anyway. Her scenes with Grant are wonderful, spiked with sarcastic humor and the kind of alcohol-fueled bad behavior that makes for a good yarn.
McCarthy and Grant have a terrific chemistry together that makes their scenes enormously enjoyable. Both are deserving of praise. But McCarthy carries to bulk of this film and her work is striking. While she has done a few other dramatic film roles, notably in ST. VINCENT with Bill Murray, this one may be a game changer for McCarthy, and a performance certain to spark talk of Oscar.
Whether Lee Israel’s fall was due primarily to alcoholism, changing popular tastes, a refusal to adapt to the marketplace, or just her own prickly personality is debatable but clearly she was a poster child for being one’s own worst enemy. With no other skill than writing and a knack for imitating the style of the great writers she admired, Israel embarked on a criminal endeavor that was both audacious and lucrative.
Movie promotional materials describe Israel as a cat lover but it is really only the one cat she cares about (and we later learn the reason for that). an elderly ailing black-and-white cat with litter-box issues..Still, her concern for this animal shows a warmth and responsible side of her not evident in most of her life.
Israel says she prefers cats to people but she clearly prefers whiskey and soda to everything else. With an disdain for all and a urge to insult, Israel makes enemies where ever she goes. McCarthy effectively conveys Israel’s anti-social personality in an early scene, when the author arrives at a party and immediately berates the hostess (her agent, played well by Jane Curtin), and then going on to be rude to everyone else in reach. Although Lee sometimes is attracted to other women, relationships are just too much work for her. There is one exception to her solitary curmudgeonly life, her friend Jack (played with great barfly charm by Richard E. Grant), another hard-drinking soul who shares her caustic wit. and eventually becomes her partner in crime.
There is nothing cuddly about this cactus of a person yet McCarthy draws us into her story and finds the human side under the hard crusty shell. Director Marielle Heller and scriptwriters Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty build an engrossing tale of someone falling into crime one step at a time, as well as a portrait of a talented person whose own flaws sabotage her.
Aided by a perfect score that features Billy Holiday and Lou Reed, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? is by turns ironically funny and tragically sad. It makes for an intriguing, sometime jaw-dropping wild trip, topped by what is easily the best performance that McCarthy has ever given.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
