Can You Ever Forgive Me? (4/5 Stars)

Sometimes a comedian's persona parlays perfectly into a dramatic role adding depth and pathos into what was before a rather two dimensional act. A great example of this is Adam Sandler's turn in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love. It was ostensibly the same rage-prone Adam Sandler character that he got famous for in a bunch of pure comedic movies like Happy Gilmore and The Waterboy, but Punch-Drunk Love got inside it and turned it the Sandler-persona for one brief shining moment into the stuff of art.

This can be said of Melissa McCarthy's turn here in Can You Ever Forgive Me? I have always considered her shtick a bit overrated and too dependent on being a dependable jerk. In Can You Ever Forgive Me?, she inhabits a role, playing a real life jerk named Lee Israel, that takes this persona to the logical end of the line and then asks the audience to consider her nature for more time than a punchline. Their are moments of subliminity in this movie when you feel like you really understand her in a new way and, for a brief shining moment, what floats to the top is the stuff of art. Melissa McCarthy was nominated for an Oscar for her work here (her co-star Richard E. Grant was also nominated) and it is well-deserved.

Lee Israel was a real person, a writer who specialized in biographies in the bad old days of New York City. In the early 1990s, after had lost her last job because of alcoholism, and without friends or family because she was a jerk, she became desperate. She could not pay the rent and more dramatically, she couldn't pay the vet costs for her sole companion, her beloved cat. While doing research in the library for a book on Fanny Brice nobody wanted, she serendipitously found a few old letters from the comedian. She sold one, got some money, but not all that much because the letter wasn't exciting. She added some caustic wit onto the next one in a p.s. line. That letter sold for much more. So she started forging letters in the style of other authors like Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, and such.

She actually did not make all that much money. Still the movie is fascinating in several procedural ways. It explains quite succinctly how Lee Isreal made these letters and how she fooled the anitque dealers. It also makes apparent Lee Israel's artistic worth. Nobody would buy her books, but everyone believes that the letters are real because Israel succeeds so well in capturing the voices of the authors she is impersonating.

But most of all, the movie is succeeds in its portrayal of a character at her lowest gaining some victories however small. Lee Israel is a miserable person. At the time she embarks on her criminal career she remeets an acquaintance named Jack Hock, played here by Richard E. Grant. Jack Hock is absurdly optimistic given his status as a lonely and penniless queer man. One of the biggest laughs in the movie is when Jack Hock is revealed to be homeless and speaking about this to Lee he relates his failures but adds, "I can't say I have any regrets." "That can't possibly be true," she deadpans. Jack Hock is so low on the societal totem-pole he seems to be unable to judge Lee's immoral behavior. This allows him to become her drinking buddy and every now and again, there is one particularly sublime moment in a jazz club, we see Lee Israel relax enough to the point where she experiences something along the lines of happiness.

This is what the movie does so well. It presents a person that is not particularly likable, but also does not require the audience to like them. The movie shows a frank discussion with Lee and her agent (played by Jane Curtain) in the beginning of the movie and allows the agent to win the argument as to whether or not she deserves an advance of money ("You're not famous enough to be an asshole," her agent explains). However, the movie succeeds in explaining the character and once a character is explained, it is possible to empathize with them and her small victories become something the audience shares in. Courtroom speeches from guilty defendants are the thing of drama and Can You Ever Forgive Me? does not disappoint in this regard. We believe Lee when she states that she does not regret her actions, that the period in which she was forging letters and being able to pay the rent and help her cat were some of the best times in her life and that she had never been more proud of her work's artistic merit. We also believe her when she admits that pretending to be someone else is a coward's act, that the true artist is someone who explores herself, which she has always failed to do. She is granted parole and we are glad she doesn't receive a prison term. She is directed to attend AA meetings, which she doesn't, and we forgive her that as well. She is too old to change and is not asking anything more from us anyway.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?, was directed by Marielle Heller, She previously had made the movie The Diary of a Teenage Girl, another movie that took great interest in the overlooked inner world of a not-so-obvious character. I hope to see more movies from her.