Can You Ever Forgive Me? **** (2018, Melissa McCarthy, Richard E Grant, Dolly Wells, Ben Falcone) – Movie Review

Melissa McCarthy is now officially forgiven for Tammy, Spy and The Heat. Her winning performance as complicated alcoholic lesbian forger Lee Israel in director Marielle Heller’s comedy drama biopic Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the cornerstone of the movie’s success, though it is by no means its sole merit.

The true story screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, adapting the memoir Can You Ever Forgive Me?, makes a very brisk, witty and poignant job of telling the story of how best-selling celebrity biographer Lee Israel falls out of favour and ideas, and turns her writing to creative deception and fraud.

Ms Israel is a very abrasive New York character, with a well-hidden humanity and heart of gold, very much a McCarthy role, though she took over from Julianne Moore, making it a very different kind of movie, I guess. Nevertheless, McCarthy forges a memorable, individual, even unique on-screen character out of Ms Israel. It is a reminder, like The Happytime Murders earlier this year, that McCarthy is a proper actress as well as funny lady.

She forms a double act with Richard E Grant, Oliver Hardy to his Stan Laurel, if you can imagine Stan Laurel as an early Nineties gay English drunk. Grant does well with this character too, Jack Hock, a kind of older variant on his Withnail in Withnail & I. The gay role is respectful and sympathetic, even if you have to say Mr Hock isn’t exactly a good role model.

Ms Israel is gay too, a short-haired, frumpy, lonely lesbian, whose only previous friend before meeting Hock is her cute pussy cat. Ms Israel starts forging literary letters from the once famous – Fanny Brice, Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker. Desperate for rent money and cash for the vet, she then sells the letters for not very much to New York booksellers. This brings her into contact with a second new friend – bookshop owner Anna (Dolly Wells), a charming lesbian, whose tentative approaches Ms Israel rebuffs.

The film is gay friendly, indeed it is just plain friendly. It tells a good story, and it tells it really well. There are a lot of laughs and a lot of truths. It is sharp, acid, hard-edged at times, but warm hearted, a tiny little bit sentimental, but not too much. It declares itself a true story, and whether it is or not, it feels honest and true. The 106 minutes just go whizzing by in a warm and funny haze. The visuals find room for lots of new York flavour and Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (Ms Israel is watching it on TV reciting along with the lines) and the soundtrack finds space for Billie Holiday’s I’ll Be Seeing You. Heaven!

Jane Curtin plays Israel’s tough as nails agent Marjorie, who is useless to help. She has only a couple of scenes but she sparkles. Gregory Korostishevsky is good as the apartment manager Andre and Stephen Spinella does well as bookseller Paul. There is also a nice little role for McCarthy’s husband Ben Falcone as the devious bookseller Alan Schmidt.

Dolly Wells’s father was the comic actor John Wells.

Scene-stealer Richard E Grant took best supporting actor honours for Can You Ever Forgive Me? at the 2019 London Film Critics’ Circle awards. ‘Aged 61, I am still a nominee virgin, so to win this award is heaven!’ he said. ‘I was given 24 hours to read the script for Can You Ever Forgive Me and I thought “Well, whoever died, this is a great opportunity for me” and look what’s happened – I’m an Oscar and Bafta nominee now!’

It was nominated for three Oscars: Best Actress (Melissa McCarthy), Best Supporting Actor (Richard E Grant) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty) but no wins, and no Bafta or Golden Globes wins either.

Nicole Holofcener, who co-wrote the screenplay, was originally the director until Marielle Heller took over. ‘I didn’t leave that movie, I was fired,’ Moore said. ‘Nicole fired me. I think she didn’t like what I was doing. The only other time I was fired when I was working at a yogurt stand when was I was 15, so, yeah, it felt bad.’ Holofcener decided to cast Melissa McCarthy instead.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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