Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) – M. Heller

Here we have a “small” film, of the kind that the big studios hardly make anymore, a character study of two lonely and rather miserable humans.  Melissa McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a writer of biographies down on her luck (partly because of her misanthropic attitudes), who pragmatically turns to forging historical memorabilia from famous authors (Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward) in order to pay her rent and her cat’s vet bills.  Richard E. Grant plays her only friend, Jack Hock, a gay man apparently living on the streets, living from drink to drink, score to score.  Both are sarcastic, cynical misfits (and perhaps pointedly, also sexual minorities) unwilling or unable to join in mainstream society. So, the film is also about loneliness, the kind of loneliness that you can only find in big cities, where the constant reminder of other people’s relationships is all around.  Not that either Israel or Hock would readily admit to needing others, but you can see it in their actions and in certain moments (that the script presents well).  Given that the film is based on a true story, of course, everyone finds out about the deceptions at hand – but this is all rather besides the point except that it seems to have lead to a redemption (of sorts?).   Apparently, some of the dialogue from Grant echoes Withnail and I (1987), his first feature, which I shall have to watch again.