OVP: Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Film: Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Stars: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Jane Curtin
Director: Marielle Heller
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actress-Melissa McCarthy, Supporting Actor-Richard E. Grant, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

In the now eight years since Melissa McCarthy graduated from recognizable supporting player on shows like Gilmore Girls and Samantha Who? to proper, bankable film star, her career has been a fascinating one to watch.  She won a deserved (but I suspect just barely due to the genre bias & Shailene Woodley nearly getting in) Oscar nomination, and followed that up with a string of very successful box office performances, but as a fan, it was decidedly hit-or-miss.  Frequently it felt like she was playing on some version of the character Megan in Bridesmaids, a sweet, oversexed, and oftentimes foul-mouthed character that nonetheless you find yourself rooting for.  The best moment in the years since has been Spy, the first half of which is the funniest straight-up comedy I think I saw in the 2010's, and I genuinely cannot remember the last time I laughed SO HARD in a movie theater (...I've had a hard week, I might just watch this tonight as a reward).  She's also had a lot of misfires, particularly the frequent uninspired collaborations with her husband Ben Falcone which threatened to derail her career.  After seven years, though, what I was not expecting was Can You Ever Forgive Me?, a movie that feels like a complete risk for an actress that has been reluctant to take them, and one with immense rewards for McCarthy, who won her second Academy Award nomination for this performance.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is arguably the best kind of biopic, as it's about someone you've probably heard of who nonetheless is not super well-known, so the film can still genuinely surprise.  Lee Israel (McCarthy) is reeling six years after her failed biography of Estee Lauder (which the real-life Israel once said was the worst decision she ever made, and she should have just taken the cash Lauder offered to shut down the memoir rather than bring a bad book to the public), and she's completely lost.  She has no job, no prospects, no love life, and is broke.  One day while researching a book about Fanny Brice (that she's writing for no one in particular), she stumbles across a pair of letters from the famed comedienne, and tries to sell one of them to be able to make rent.  She discovers that the amount it's worth is dependent on if it has good content, so she punches up the second letter, makes considerably more money and then starts to impersonate well-known authors or celebrities like Noel Coward & Dorothy Parker in hopes of making money, but also as a way to show the world that she can still be a brilliant writer.  She's aided in this endeavor by an old friend Jack Hock (Grant), an openly gay drug dealer who is as biting and cynical as Lee.

The film doesn't have as much plot when you write it on paper-failed author finds get-rich-quick-scheme, it works for a while and then she gets caught & learns a lesson is pretty much the movie in one sentence, but Marielle Heller doesn't make simple movies.  There's a lot here, particularly as we learn more and more about Lee Israel herself, the woman who once came close to the sun (she had a well-received biography of Dorothy Kilgallen in real-life before the Estee Lauder book ruined her reputation & career), and not all of what we learn is particularly flattering.  Israel as a person is not a likable hero, she's not Archie Bunker where underneath all of the crankiness lies a heart-of-gold.  She's someone who struggles to get by, isn't very nice, and probably wouldn't like you if she met you.

This is a stretch for McCarthy, but she nails it and sort of makes you wish that she'd stretch this acting muscle more often.  Given the guiding hand of a really-good director, McCarthy finds Israel's voice and just runs with it, giving one of her very best performances, and one that I (a big fan) wasn't aware she was able to give.  When she gives that courtroom speech, essentially owning up to learning a lesson but not the one that the judge wanted her to learn, she finds earned emotion in a character who hates emotion, it's splendid.  Joined by Grant, getting a plum assignment and just running wild with it (Jack Hock is instantly quotable, delicious with just enough reality to stay true to his relationship with Lee), McCarthy makes Lee Israel knowable but never falsely likable, a terrific feat that makes Heller's film that much more interesting and intelligent.