McCarthy’s performance a revelation
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (M, 106 mins) Directed by Marielle Heller Reviewed by James Croot ★★★★1⁄2
This is Melissa McCarthy like you’ve never seen (or heard) her before. Gone is the shrill slapshtick of Identity Thief, Spy and The Boss to be replaced by something far more nuanced and complex.
It’s a dramatic makeover akin to Jim Carrey in The Truman Show or Robin Williams in One Hour Photo. Fans will be pleased to know, though, that she still plays a cat-loving loner.
In Can You Ever Forgive Me? that’s real-life writer Lee Israel. Known in New York literary circles for her 1970s and 80s profiles of Katharine Hepburn and Estee Lauder, Israel has fallen on hard times as the movie opens in the early 1990s.
Unable to persuade publishers of the merits of a Fanny Brice biography, she struggles to hold down a regular job because of her drinking, swearing and general dislike of others.
But now, three months behind on her rent and unable to pay the vet bills for her ailing but beloved moggie, times are getting desperate.
So when she unearths a letter from Brice during her research, Israel decides to pocket it and see what the world ‘‘elite collectable literary artefacts’’ is willing to pay for it.
After a successful payday, she decides to get even more ambitious and artistic faking, with the help of a collection of period typewriters and paper stock, correspondence from the likes of Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker.
Assisting her in her endeavour is local bon vivant Jack Hock (Richard E Grant).
However, between his alcohol addiction, drug selling and sticky fingers, Israel does wonder just how long it will be before he brings their operation down.
Based on Israel’s 2008 memoir of the same name, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a superbly crafted character study and examination of one of the odder crimes and criminals of the 20th century.
Like Bart Layton’s American Animals, this is a thriller that revels in the incompetence and flaws of its protagonists.
Screenwriters Nicole Holofcener (Friends with Money, Enough Said) and Jeff Whitty, plus director Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl) do a superb job in creating a sense of space and place, making Israel’s squalid apartment, the pair’s favourite bar and New York’s boutique bookshop scene come to life.
It’s also a story filled with terrific supporting characters, brought to life by the likes of Jane Curtin (Kate and Allie), Dolly Wells (Blunt Talk) and McCarthy’s husband Ben Falcone (Enough Said).
This is a superbly crafted character study and examination of one of the odder crimes and criminals of the 20th century.
However, the film belongs to both Grant and McCarthy.
Grant’s performance and character remind one of his seminal 1987 black comedy Withnail and I (but in a more tragicomedic way), and McCarthy is a revelation, almost unrecognisable, in more than one sense of the word, from her previous big-screen outings.
An entertaining and thoroughly engrossing take on what The New York Times described as ‘‘a sordid and pretty darn fabulous book’’.