It is not often that audiences are treated to a central character as compelling as the one in Marielle Heller’s new film, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” which has emerged as the surprise of the Telluride Film Fest. Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant give bravura performances that hover on a high-wire between comedy and tragedy, as we watch the world of two barely-there people crumble.
McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a famous forger who spent several months plying that craft before she attracted the attention of the FBI in 1993. We first meet Israel as a once-legit writer of pop biographies who is on the skids. Her agent laughs in her face when she asks for an advance.
No one wants to read her Fanny Brice biography, no one likes her because she’s mean and no one takes her seriously because she can’t even manage the basics of taking care of herself.
McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a famous forger who spent several months plying that craft before she attracted the attention of the FBI in 1993. We first meet Israel as a once-legit writer of pop biographies who is on the skids. Her agent laughs in her face when she asks for an advance.
No one wants to read her Fanny Brice biography, no one likes her because she’s mean and no one takes her seriously because she can’t even manage the basics of taking care of herself.
- 9/3/2018
- by Sasha Stone
- The Wrap
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