Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

[wanderingstar]

Quote

When Lee Israel falls out of step with current tastes, she turns her art form to deception. An adaptation of the memoir Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the true story of best-selling celebrity biographer Lee Israel.

I knew nothing about the story of Lee Israel, but I like Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant, and this looked interesting. I went to see it and was blown away by the warmth and incisiveness of both the writing and the performances. MM was perfect as the prickly, down-on-her-luck Lee. And REG is just as good as Lee's partner in crime, Jack Hock. Their friendship is delightful and heartbreaking to watch. And shout out to Dolly Wells, as a bookshop owner who falls for Lee's forgeries - and for Lee.

In telling Lee Israel's story, the film comments on friendship, the ups and downs of the writing life and the lengths people are sometimes forced to go to in order to survive. After we watched it, my friends and I couldn't stop talking about it for the next couple of hours. It's definitely a film that will stick with me for a while.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Golden Globe nominations:

Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama: Melissa McCarthy
Best Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture: Richard E. Grant

[Brn2bwild]

I just saw this and thought it was good, especially McCarthy's performance.  I have just one question:

Spoiler

How did the cat die? 

[Simon Boccanegra]

@Brn2bwild, I know you probably haven't been waiting almost two months to get an answer to that question, but I just saw the movie, and I don't think Jack did anything wrong. In the scene shortly before that, he appeared to be following Lee's instructions. It was just a case of time running out, and then Lee lashing out at an upsetting discovery, thinking Jack had to have screwed up somehow because it happened on his watch. It's more about how she sees him, and what kind of person she, unfortunately, is.  

This is one of my favorites of the 2018 films. It is one of the most affecting studies I have ever seen of a difficult personality. There were a few possible tonal choices for this material, and I could have imagined a film more like I, Tonya, but the director, Marielle Heller, reins in the spite and doesn't seize opportunities for black comedic potshots. She's more empathetic, focusing on the loneliness and desperation of the central pair. She makes the process of Lee's scams intriguing to watch, then effectively mounts suspense as questions lead to investigation and Lee keeps doubling down.

But ultimately it's not a heist movie as much as a movie about flames burning low. The flair for words that Lee shows in her forgeries is her talent coming through an occluded chamber, and Richard E. Grant is touching as an aging party boy worn down to the nub. You get the sense that these two must have been riding high ten years earlier. The film so beautifully catches that "dawn of the '90s" atmosphere, when the bills were coming due in so many ways. The last scene between Lee and Jack ("Will you make me 29? And don't make me sound stupid?") will stay with me for a long time.

Nice to see Jane Curtin as the agent, and Dolly Wells is quite good as an early dupe and the eventual quasi-love interest. I loved the performances, the dialogue, the music choices, the editing, everything about it.   

Melissa McCarthy has little chance of winning in her category, Grant perhaps slightly more chance of winning his (though Ali is a heavy favorite), but I prefer them to all of their competition. It would make my night if this won even one of the three categories it's up for. The only other Adapted Screenplay nominee I rate as highly is the Coens', and that's even less likely to win. 

How odd that two of the Best Actress nominees are in early-'90s period pieces involving literary deception.

Edited February 20, 2019 by Simon Boccanegra

[Cheezwiz]

I just watched this one tonight, and absolutely loved it. I would be so happy to see any of the folks nominated for this one win, but I know it's unlikely to happen. This has to be one of the underdoggiest underdog Oscar nominated films ever.

It was a touching, entertaining look at isolation and hardscrabble survival in the city. Also aging and feeling your best years have passed you by. And if you know even a passing amount about the authors Lee Israel was imitating, the snippets of letters she composes in the film are hugely entertaining. McCarthy and Grant were perfect as the oddball partners in crime. Loved seeing Jane Curtin as Israel's editor, as well as Dolly Wells as the sweet bookshop owner who befriends Lee. It was heartwarming to see such a humane treatment of hopeless outsiders.

Now I want to dig out my Dorothy Parker collection of stories!

[angora]

I loved it too.  The movie is just put together so well, firing on all cylinders, and Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant have such fabulous, cynical, "us against the world" platonic chemistry together.  It accomplishes everything it sets out to do with humor, tension, and sympathy, and that can't be discounted.

I love the theme of Lee worrying that her life should have added up to more by now and seeing how much genuine fulfillment she finds from writing those letters (it kills me every time she points out a line that "[she] thought was PARTICULARLY witty" to a collector - even passing them off as someone else's work, she can't resist tooting her own horn!)

Another thing I really appreciate is that both Lee and Jack are gay but that, while this fact isn't obscured in the slightest, the story isn't ABOUT being gay.  It's about this woman, the things she did, and the one friend who knew her secret.  I know a lot of people wish we could see more stories about gay people in various genres that aren't just "Gay Stories" (about coming out, homophobia, AIDS, etc.), and for me, this is an excellent example of that.

[Simon Boccanegra]

I read the screenplay this morning. It's labeled as the final shooting script, but it's longer than the film. I wonder if some of the missing material was filmed and will surface as deleted scenes. The opening scene with Lee drinking at her desk and getting fired from the law office runs longer. There's a scene of Lee not having enough money at the market and having to put things back, but prioritizing Jersey's cat food. There's a subplot of several scenes with Lee employed as a wealthy younger woman's personal assistant, and getting fired for being "sarcastic and impolite." This employer treats Lee dismissively even though she has some of her books on her shelf. Later, Lee protests the process of declawing to another cat owner in the vet's waiting room, and tells the receptionist they shouldn't do it. Lee and Jack visit a cat café.  

It's nothing the film really needed, and I liked the pace of the finished product, but the missing scenes are as well written as the rest. Good screenplay.  

Edited February 21, 2019 by Simon Boccanegra

[paramitch]

I just saw this, and found it both profoundly moving, subversively funny, and also terribly sad.

I thought this was a real actor's showcase, especially for McCarthy. There is a certain courage and freedom that I love about performers who are willing to abandon trying to make the audience love them, if that makes sense. Based on my impressions from the stage world, most actors want to be liked (even if they're playing reprehensible characters). But McCarthy absolutely goes for the jugular. She is willing to be a difficult, cruel and openly unlikable woman (who I still ended up caring enormously for). 

There's a great scene with her agent early on, with a terrific Jane Curtin, and Lee is just being this ginormous asshole. She says not one but several potentially really ugly, unforgivable things, and yet her agent manages to remain relatively kind (if exasperated) in the scene, and I thought that was so representative of this person that the movie shows us (in Lee Israel). Like, I thought she was a jerk but I was still rooting for her.

I also loved the paradox between McCarthy's beautiful, soft dimpled face, and the truly abrasive and unkind person beneath.

And there were scenes that just broke my heart, and where I thought McCarthy was just superb. And that final meeting was incredibly moving, and Grant just seems to be nothing but blue, blue, eyes in a pale, pale face. Both actors were absolutely superb there (I was a little heartbroken to discover later that this scene was fictional).

The scenes with the cat were hard to watch. (Like many, I wasn't sure what actually happened there at first.) But the final scene made me very happy for Lee in a small way. 

The movie actually touched me enough that I bought the book. I'm very interested to see it from a first-person perspective.
 

Edited March 6, 2019 by paramitch
Fixed one sentence

[Cheezwiz]

19 hours ago, paramitch said:

And that final meeting was incredibly moving, and Grant just seems to be nothing but blue, blue, eyes in a pale, pale face. Both actors were absolutely superb there (I was a little heartbroken to discover later that this scene was fictional).

Awww, that's too bad - I was hoping that scene might have had some basis in reality: "Make me 29, and not stupid". The other scene that I loved was McCarthy's statement to the Judge. At first she's all defiant, and you assume it's going to go completely off the rails, but her description of her strange alliance with Jack wound up really pulling the heartstrings. That may have been fictionalized too, but I just loved that scene and the whole movie.

[paramitch]

On 3/6/2019 at 2:59 PM, Cheezwiz said:

Awww, that's too bad - I was hoping that scene might have had some basis in reality: "Make me 29, and not stupid". The other scene that I loved was McCarthy's statement to the Judge. At first she's all defiant, and you assume it's going to go completely off the rails, but her description of her strange alliance with Jack wound up really pulling the heartstrings. That may have been fictionalized too, but I just loved that scene and the whole movie.

If it helps, she did see him again (and consider tripping him), and spoke to him in the hospital before he died.

Meanwhile, I just finished the book (I got sidetracked for a week or two), and I have to say I feel very divided about it. SPOILERS on the book, with my thoughts below!

Spoiler

I was curious about point of view -- would Lee know or own what an awful person she was? (No matter how much I came to love her?) And the answer was... basically... no. It's very apparent to me that the film therefore wasn't just an adaptation of her book, but that it also incorporated outside accounts of that time and place with Lee, as well.

The book is witty and sharp, but Lee really seems to be completely unaware of how she actually came off or treated people, and most of her warmth and emotion are primarily focused on... her forgeries, and the objects of those forgeries. She is much warmer about Dorothy Parker or Noel Coward than she is about the actual people she interacts with (which is probably to be expected, but it's odd). Book-Lee doesn't even seem super-invested in her cats (there are several cats in the book, not one).

On the cats -- the movie's choices were kind of weird but I guess predictable. Lee in actuality appears to have had two and possibly four cats during the events of the book. Her first cat does pass away at 21 fairly early on (and is the one who pooped under the bed, etc), in its sleep (Jack has nothing to do with any of the cats in the book at all). She references two other cats from some other time, and then later adopts a young alley cat that gets sick (and that's when she starts forging, as in the movie). 

So -- having seen and read both now, I do think the cat stuff was a little over the top, but I guess it's effective in showing us how lonely Lee is, and how important this cat is to her as something to love and be loved (and also, 12 just isn't that old for a cat, so that was slightly jarring for me in the film too). I just think having Jack be responsible was overkill (and it didn't happen). Also, Jack is presented somewhat strangely in the book -- he's more of an intermittent character and only shows up about two-thirds of the way through (even though she'd known him for years). 

And Lee's prose style is rather distanced -- she seems to see even her own actual moods and actions in the third person. She never really comes across as all that contrite. She seems, in fact, really proud of her letters, and most of the book is about how she researches and accomplishes the forgeries themselves.

I sound awfully nitpicky, but I did like the book -- I just liked the movie better. I felt like it let me get closer to the characters and to see and love them for their vulnerable selves.

[Cheezwiz]

Wow @paramitch, thanks for the summary! I was toying with the idea of reading Israel's book, but based on your review, I think I'll just stick with the movie. It may have been mostly fiction, but I really loved it, and would prefer to have that in my head. I had kinda hoped the real life characters would have had a bit more self-awareness, but it doesn't sound like it.

[Quickbeam]

Loved the movie, spectacular casting. So nice to see Jane Curtain in a secondary role, she’s always so good. Felt this was some of the best work McCarthy has done.

[Schweedie]

7 hours ago, Quickbeam said:

Felt this was some of the best work McCarthy has done.

I love that she's gone from Sookie St James to performances like this. It's like the absolute opposite end of the spectrum.

[Chaos Theory]

I watched this on an airplane. It was pretty good.  The casting was great.  Always nice to see Jane Curtain.   I watched this on a very small screen with a child screaming behind me and without my good contact in so I probably missed a lot.   But a good story about bad people doing bad things to gullible people is always fun.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Chaos Theory