Why is it that we do not appreciate the talent of wonderful comedic performers until they’ve proven themselves of equal measure in dramatic roles? Why is funny seen as cheaper than morose or sentimental? I hardly think anyone would doubt that Melissa McCarthy could pull of the role she’s given in Can You Forgive Me?, an acid-tongued author who used to write best-sellers and is now resorting to proofreading to make a living. In the film, McCarthy is able to be bitter, petty and comports herself with an entire aura of mean-spiritedness that keeps essentially everyone at a distance. She is playing Lee Israel, an author known for her immersive biographies of famous women such as Tallulah Bankhead and Estée Lauder. Outside of her published work, she is probably even more notorious for her criminal career.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? introduces McCarthy’s Israel as a desperate writer with a sick cat and an Upper West Side apartment that is rotting away with pest problems and a general lack of care. Years removed from her days on the New York Times best-sellers list, and having burned the entirety of her professional bridges, Israel must face the fact that she can no longer write as a career. Desperate for cash, she sells a signed personal letter that she’d received from Katherine Hepburn, and makes more than she expected. When she finds another letter by the late Vaudeville actress Fanny Bryce, she begins to learn that there is a lucrative business behind the collecting of rare letters. Putting her writing skills to use, Israel begins to forge letters by Bryce, Noël Coward and even Dorothy Parker.

The film’s script (written by Avenue Q‘s Jeff Whitty and the great Nicole Holofcener) treats Israel’s criminality with a wink and a nod. There isn’t much sympathy to be had for the madly rich fetishizing other people’s correspondence, or even the bookish shop owners who barter in their distribution. In fact, Can You Forgive Me? finds the crime of Israel’s self-isolation much more serious. Along this journey of letter forgery, Israel is actually able to make a friend, striking up a relationship with a former acquaintance named Jack Hock (a terrific Richard E. Grant), a shameless British cad who used to run in the same literary circles. Israel and Hock share a disdain for the very crowd that has shunned them and rejoice in Israel’s newfound way of sticking it to them. They also share alcoholism.

The relationship between Hock and Israel is never romantic (they’re both gay), but there is an intimacy. When Israel’s schemes begin getting noticed by shop owners, she enlists Hock to continue on and keep the money rolling in. The trust that forms between the two of them runs against Israel’s personal credo of staying alone at all times but it is this friendship, I feel, that is central to the film. Director Marielle Heller (her second feature after The Diary of a Teenage Girl in 2015) puts a strong focus on how these two incredibly different, but equally melancholy souls come together to pull of this overall low-key string of heists. Each drowning their sorrows in booze and illegitimate enterprise (Jack also sells cocaine on the side), Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the best platonic love story of 2018.

This could only work if the acting is right, and working with a script by Holofcener, Heller proves to share Holofcener’s gifted eye for performance. Grant, a veteran performer, is wonderfully charming as Jack, a guilty party who has the gift of never feeling guilty. But this is a Melissa McCarthy vehicle. The actress, a veteran in her own right and one of the more successful actors in Hollywood right now, gives less of a dramatic turn and more of a reconfiguration of her comedic persona. At one point, a shop owner played by Dolly Wells tells Israel she has a “caustic wit”, to which Israel responds it hasn’t helped her “in the relationship department”. McCarthy’s Israel is sad and lonely, but still unafraid to defend herself. She plays into Israel’s intelligence as a writer and a liar, and is also careful to show how that intelligence does little to help her in her situation.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the kind of low-stakes caper film that I can get behind. Mostly because it understands that characters are more interesting than criminals. Led by the greatness of Grant and McCarthy, the film is filled with spectacular supporting performances including Wells, Stephen Spinella, Jane Curtin and Ben Falcone, among others. Heller is making a film about addiction and literary dreams dashed, and how the two are often commingled. That Israel’s crimes are ironic makes it a terrific subject for a movie. That her crimes are motivated by desperation, financial and personal, makes it a subject that is all too human.

 

Directed by Marielle Heller