Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a true story based on the 2008 memoir of Lee Israel, the writer who turned her hand to forging literary letters and who became, as she puts it, ‘a better Dorothy Parker than Dorothy Parker’. So it’s that story, but it also isn’t. That story is here but the real story, I would say, is about loneliness and alcoholism and two outsiders who, in a Midnight Cowboy sort of way, form a friendship at a desperate time. And it is rivetingly moving on this count, as are the performances from Melissa McCarthy (Oscar-nominated) and Richard E. Grant, also Oscar-nominated. (Great, although it does now look as if his work on Spice World will never be recognised. A pity, but there you are.)
Directed by Marielle Heller with a screenplay by Jeff Whitty and Nicole Holofcener, the film is set in New York in 1991 and opens with Lee (McCarthy) being fired as a legal proofreader for drinking on the job and telling her boss to ‘fuck off’.
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