While not a household name, writer Lee Israel had a very interesting life, to say the least. She started as a freelance writer for The New York Times and Soap Opera Digest in the 1960s. Her first taste of success came in the 70s and 80s when she became famous for writing biographies. She wrote biographies on people like Tallulah Bankhead and Dorothy Kilgallen, the latter of which becoming a bestseller. Unfortunately, as time went along, her career started to decline and she was struggling to make ends meet. However, after selling a stolen letter from Fanny Brice, she decided to forge and sell letters from prominent writers. She made enough to pay the bills, but she was eventually caught by the FBI. She wrote a memoir about her criminal activities before passing away in 2014. In 2018, the memoir was adapted into the biopic Can You Ever Forgive Me?
%
Rating
After having a successful career writing biographies, writer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) has fallen on hard times. No one’s interested in her work anymore, and she’s more or less gone broke, barely able to make ends meet. She soon decides to start writing a biography on Fanny Brice when she stumbles across one of her letters. Lee steals the letter and sells it, but not before adding content to the letter to make it more interesting. This begins her cycle of forging letters, posing as famous literary figures, and selling them for large sums of money. Along with her gay friend Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant), they go to various dealers to sell her forged letters. While things promising at first, it soon starts crashing down when the FBI starts investigating her for forgery and impersonation. As the threat of the FBI starts looming, everything in Lee’s life starts crumbling.
I was pretty excited to see this film despite the fact that I had only seen one trailer for it. Once I saw the amazing critical reception it was getting, it made me curious and definitely interested in seeing it. While I’m not necessarily a fan of Melissa McCarthy, I’ve never disliked her either, having not seen her in much. She’s mostly known for being in comedies, so it was pretty remarkable to see her giving a dramatic performance. That said, she does inject some dry humor in her performance, and it really works for her character. She and Richard E. Grant are fantastic together, and it’s fun to see them play off each other. Another highlight here is Jane Curtin as Lee’s agent Marjorie, who clearly is sad to see how far she’s fallen. For McCarthy, this is definitely a career-defining performance.
The film was directed by Marielle Heller, who also directed 2015’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl. While I haven’t seen that movie, I am curious to see it if it’s as good as this film was. In many ways, I related to this movie in its depiction of someone who wants to do what they love. It’s easy to root for her since she’s fallen on hard times and is struggling to get by. Even though she is committing fraud and clearly lying to people, Lee is still a character you can get behind. I’m not sure how historically accurate this is, but regardless, this is still a fantastic movie. The actors are superb, it’s well-filmed, the writing is great, and it feels almost uplifting at points. Given its title, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a film that doesn’t need forgiveness because it’s so good.
