Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) is a writer struggling from the failure of her biography of Estee Lauder, years removed from the success she had in her previous works about Tallulah Bankhead and Dorothy Kilgallen. Her personality and alcoholism are crushing any chance of work, according to her agent, but she can only move forward and looks to write a biography of Fanny Brice. But a bigger scheme appears when she and a friend, Jack (Richard Grant), find money in forging letters from famous celebrities. What is the harm of that?
Authorship, truth, and the struggles of acceptance are the center of director Marielle Heller’s (A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood) true life film. She does justice to this story of queer friendship with two outsiders, similar to the odd relationship in Grant’s Withnail & I.
This film has Grant being the fun, yet troublesome friend who has his weaknesses in men and knows what it means to be a conman. With Lee, her personal life is insolar and her closest friends are cats, those who don’t mind being alone for a time, so the feelings are mutual. She does not talk openly about being a lesbian and struggles with social anxiety which has nixed any hope of creating emotional relationships with others.
The heart of the matter is Lee and Jack wanting something that seems impossible to get. If you can’t love the person you want, love the one you’re with, right? Forgery, as Lee Israel would say, would be her best work considering that she almost got away with it. Only the (false) words of Noel Coward would trip it up.
Heller’s direction, plus the script from Nicole Holofcner and Jeff Witty, does pass upon judgment to Israel’s work. There is compassion to both characters for the lack of love around them.
Can You Ever Forgive Me (Lee Israel)? The answer is yes. It is an understated film that checks off the boxes of great film and one that does not need to be showy or dramatic to display such great performances. That is not a forged sentence.