Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant make this melancholy account of literary forgery funny and unexpectedly moving. Marielle Heller gives their difficult friendship time to develop, though the screenplay sometimes explains what the actors have already made clear.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? makes good company out of a woman who has worked hard to discourage it. Marielle Heller’s film about literary forger Lee Israel is funny, sad and worth an evening, with Melissa McCarthy giving the character’s bitterness a convincing weight. The temptation with such a subject is to make clever crime seem like a reasonable answer to professional neglect. This film takes Lee’s loneliness seriously without suggesting that everyone else should have found her easier to bear.
Melissa McCarthy makes Lee’s intelligence inseparable from her capacity to annoy people. The hostility feels practised, with the defensive reflex coming through even when she has the sharper mind in the exchange. It is a performance that makes a complaint sound both justified and exhausting, so we can understand why somebody would want to leave her alone. Jeff Whitty and Nicole Holofcener’s screenplay gives her wit without pretending that a quick answer will make her any easier to live with.
Richard E. Grant, as Jack Hock, supplies the companion such a woman might tolerate: someone with enough faults to make judgement awkward. His charm has an untrustworthy edge, and the friendship benefits from our uncertainty about how much either person can offer. We were moved by their need for one another. The insults are funny, but Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant make the relief of having someone to talk to painfully clear beneath them.
Brandon Trost’s subdued photography suits the shabby New York setting, allowing the period atmosphere to accumulate without making it the attraction. Stephen H. Carter’s production design gives the bookselling world a persuasive sense of use, somewhere people work rather than a collection of desirable old objects. The attention to the physical work of forgery is particularly satisfying. Making something convincing requires care, and the film lets us see why Lee might feel pride in a piece of dishonest work.
Anne McCabe’s editing is most effective when it gives the two leads room to irritate and amuse each other. Some scenes could finish sooner, although the unhurried pace usually suits characters whose friendship depends on spending time together without achieving much. Nate Heller’s music feels suitably modest beside these performances. For a crime film, this is an agreeable way to spend our time: listening to difficult people talk, with the business of getting away with something supplying an additional reason to pay attention.
The weakness comes when the screenplay explains feelings that the performances have already made legible. Jeff Whitty and Nicole Holofcener are good at the sour joke, less convincing when dialogue supplies a clear account of someone’s damage. We would have welcomed more uncertainty, particularly around the loneliness that makes Lee so difficult and so vulnerable. Marielle Heller occasionally makes these people a little easier to understand than they need to be, which takes some of the discomfort out of sitting with them.
At 106 minutes, this is a good choice for an evening when sharp conversation is enough. It asks for patience with bitterness, evasions and people who make friendship unnecessarily hard work. Anyone hoping for a brisk account of a clever swindle should adjust expectations; a fondness for bad company will be more useful.
