Butler's Cinema Scene

Melissa McCarthy

“CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?” My rating: B 
106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Can a criminal act be a form of art?

Well, yes — at least according to “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

Writer/director Marielle Heller’s sophomore feature (after the hair-raising “Diary of a Teenage Girl”) is based on the real case of Lee Israel, a minor author of literary and show-biz biographies who back in the early ’90s revived her flagging financial fortunes by forging and selling nearly 400 letters from famous literary types like Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker.

Starring Melissa McCarthy (in serious mode) as the curmudgeonly Israel and Richard E. Grant as her lowlife friend and co-conspirator, “Can You Ever…” walks a fine line between bathos and black humor. Along the way it gets you rooting for the “bad” guys.

When we first meet McCarthy’s Lee she’s trying to get her long-time agent (Jane Curtin) to cough up advance money for a bio of vaudeville legend Fanny Brice. That isn’t going to happen. As the agent calmly points out, there’s no interest in a Fanny Brice book and, anyway, Lee’s snarling personality pretty much alienates everyone she comes into contact with.

Indeed, Lee has just lost a temp gig for drinking on the job and loudly cursing her co-workers. Her sole friend is her cat, who needs medicine she cannot afford. Lee’s not above stealing another woman’s coat at a literary cocktail party.

She’s slugging them back at her local bar when she makes the acquaintance of Jack Hock (Grant), an aging British queen who passes himself off as a jaded sophisticate (he’s jaded, but hardly sophisticated) while living hand-to-mouth on NYC’s mean streets.

Jack’s catty, go-for-broke outlook meshes nicely with Lee’s misanthropy…they’re just what the other needs. For a while they’re mere drinking buddies.

Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant

But then Lee, desperate for cash, decides to sell one of her proudest possessions…a letter written by Kathryn Hepburn. Something clicks, and soon she’s faking her own celebrity letters.  Lee carefully researches the periods in which the letters would have been written, buys dozens of second-hand typewriters, has phony stationary printed and practices forging the signatures of the late great. As a final touch she “ages” the documents in her oven.

She learns early on that the more interesting the letter — the more ribald, the more witty, the more it reflects the personality of the author Israel is mimicking — the bigger the payday.  She takes pride in writing a better letter than Dorothy Parker ever did.

Initially Lee peddles these forgeries herself, making the rounds of the city’s rare books stores.  When it becomes clear that no one person would have access to so many high-quality letters, she employs the unreliable Jack to make the pitches (he claims to be clearing out the estate of a dead relative).

For a while it’s a wild ride.  Lee and Jack share a contempt for the establishment types who have written them off; making a good living by capitalizing on the greed and unscrupulousness inherent in the rare letters market gives them a chance to feel superior. Moreover, Lee is producing the best writing of her career.

But Jack’s fecklessness and party-hearty attitude soon become a liability. And when a couple of federal agents come calling…

Neither Lee Israel or Jack Hock are what you’d call likable characters. Their relationship is based on shared hatreds.

But McCarthy and Grant are so terrific that they make these two questionable figures compelling. Oscar noms could very well be in both of their futures.

| Robert W. Butler