Tuesday, November 13, 2018

"Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

 ☆ 

It doesn't seem right to dismiss Lee Israel, whose wild and weird story is the basis for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, as a mean and horrible person. To do so completely undermines everything that has happened to her before this movie begins. Lee is 50-ish, disillusioned, disappointed, and tired of being the butt of everyone's jokes, which she knows she is. How could a woman who carries a Scotch glass in her messenger bag not be aware of how others see her?

Lee looks in the mirror and sees, well, herself. She has written two books, both biographies, and wants to write a third, about Fanny Brice. The year is 1991, and even then a book about Fanny Brice was a few decades too late. Lee is undaunted. No, wait, scratch that: Lee is daunted by just about everything. And why shouldn't she be?

She's been fired yet again, this time for being abusive to a co-worker who, quite frankly, deserved it. Her books have been failures, just like her relationship. Her apartment is filled with flies. She's broke. And the damned world keeps insisting she be polite and upbeat. She has  She has seen enough of people to know she prefers the company of her cat (who's sick), and she is well aware that this is not how successful people live their lives. What can she do? It is who she is.

She doesn't complain about it, so why is everyone always complaining about her? The way she sees it, she has every right to be pissed off at the agent who won't return her calls but races to the phone when she thinks it's Nora Ephron on the other end.

Melissa McCarthy captures a real, beating heart inside the layers of this woman who is dismissed by the entire world so frequently that she has come to dismiss herself. McCarthy makes Israel entirely watchable, wonderfully alive and oddly hopeful, so when she stumbles upon a way to make a quick buck that is entirely unethical and kinda-sorta criminal, we're rooting for her. She is an insufferable person, maybe, but only in the way that every single one of us is insufferable by the time we reach a certain age; life owes us more than it's given us, doesn't it? Why not take it?

Her weary view of the world is matched by the approach Jack Hoff (Richard E. Grant) takes to life -- he's gay in 1991, he's seen everyone he cares about die, he might very well die himself, and, screw it, he wants in on this scheme of Lee's. In the odd and squishy ethics of director Marielle Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me?, what Lee is doing seems harmless enough, and she has genuinely stumbled upon it herself: She has taken to forging letters allegedly written by literary giants, people like Noël Coward, Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner.

She sells the first one, legitimately, to a confident and pretty book store owner (Dolly Wells), and then realizes there is real money to be made here, a vast network of collectors that she can tap into; they don't ask too many questions, and, besides, everyone seems to be doing equally shady things.

The story itself is unlikely but true (which is the best kind of true, as the screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty knows), and Lee's do-what-it-takes approach to life reminded me, along with its New York vibe, both of mid-'80s Woody Allen and, oddly, of Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman is told by his agent that under no circumstances will anyone ever hire him for anything.

Lee also has an agent, who is played by Jane Curtin with sparkle, fire and a distinct air of sympathy. Her message to Lee: Find another line of work, because you're never gonna make it doing what you're doing. Lee's tired of that answer. And she's even more tired of never being willing to act, either way, on the advice.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is about a woman who is complicated, unpleasant and slightly unhinged, and none of it without good reason. She knows she's not the best person out there, but, damn it, she's not the worst, either. An all-too-brief scene with Lee and her ex-girlfriend (Anna Deveare Smith) is heartbreaking in its honesty; Lee is a difficult person, even for herself.

Yes, the movie is a showcase for the dramatic side of Melissa McCarthy, and a wonderful one. But there's much more to it than letting McCarthy look and act unglamorous and unseemly. It's above all a carefully observed portrait of how people see exactly what they want to see, about how they make up their minds based on little more than a cursory glance and a gut feeling, and about how both of those things can be wrong.

Late in the movie, there's a scene in which Lee gets a chance to explain herself. And she does. The way she does it (not to mention the way McCarthy plays the moment) is just perfect for how it sums up a woman who is unrepentant about scamming a world that scammed her, is even a little tired of it, but willing to be just the tiniest bit hopeful that maybe there's something halfway good still waiting in it for her.




Viewed November 13, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

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