CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (15) ★★★★★
COMEDY drama based on the book by Lee Israel. Set in early 1990s New York City, one enterprising forger digs herself out of a financial hole by inventing signed correspondence from the likes of Noel Coward, Dorothy Parker and Tennessee Williams.
When we meet Lee (Melissa McCarthy, above), she is about to be fired from her latest dead-end job for unruly conduct. She is three months behind on the rent for her apartment and her most recent biography, Estee Lauder: Behind The Magic, is being heavily discounted to shift unsold copies.
Unable to pay for groceries, Lee sells one of her prized possessions – a framed letter from actress Katharine Hepburn – to a local bookseller for $175.
The voracious appetite for literary memorabilia sows the seed of an outrageous idea: Lee can use her knowledge of famous writers to forge typewritten and signed correspondence from various literary wags. She foolishly enlists the help of a boozy accomplice, Jack Hock (Richard E Grant), a selfconfessed renegade and rebel who has been banned from several local bookshops.
“I have a little shoplifting problem,” he confides with a twinkle in his eye.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? pivots deliciously on the fractious relationship between Lee and Jack.
In scenes of verbal sparring, Grant and McCarthy light up the screen, the latter delivering the most compelling and layered dramatic performance of her career.