US biopic drama in which biographer Lee Israel's failing writing career leads her to commit literary fraud.
As it sweeps you exhilaratingly back to the 1990s, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is deviously funny and deeply moving.
Everything – performance, script, direction, cinematography – works in perfect concert.
McCarthy pulls off quite a trick in this Oscar-tipped comedy: she makes the character of embittered literary forger Lee Israel seem lovable.
Melissa McCarthy is magnificent as an odious literary forger abetted by Richard E Grant as her lounge-lizard drinking buddy.
Both McCarthy and Grant have been Oscar-nominated and rightly so: their camaraderie – fuelled by daytime drinking sessions – is a hoot, at times recalling Withnail and I.
A moving hymn to outsiders, this thrives on two criminally good performances from Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant. It also confirms Marielle Heller as one of the brightest directorial talents around.
It’s a melancholic, smart, cautionary tale about a woman who decided if you can’t make it, fake it.
Oscar nominees Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant make a perfect pairing in this finely composed portrayal of real-life literary forger Lee Israel.
Kudos to director Marielle Heller for restraining McCarthy’s natural clowning and elevating Grant’s theatricality to the brink of believability, while drawing from both great depth and subtlety. (Dolly Wells does jolly well, too, as the bookish love interest Anna.)
Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant on the importance of women behind the camera.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow from Monday March 4, 2019, until Thursday March 7, 2019. More info: http://www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre/
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