Nov. 6th, 2018

osprey_archer: (writing)
I’ve loved Melissa McCarthy every since Gilmore Girls, so of course I had to go see her in her latest movie, Marielle Heller’s biopic of Lee Israel, Can You Ever Forgive Me? There are moments of humor, as you might expect from a McCarthy movie, but it’s a darker, colder humor than Gilmore Girls or Ghostbusters.

McCarthy plays Israel, a middle-aged writer who has written a few well-received biographies but whose publishing career has hit the rocks. Desperate for money, Israel slips into a gig forging letters by famous writers: first only adding a postscript to a letter that she found tucked away in a book, but soon fabricating all-new letters to sell. “I’m a better Dorothy Parker than Dorothy Parker!” she boasts to her friend Jack Hawk.

Indeed, Israel’s such a good Dorothy Parker that when she goes on a is-this-a-date-or-are-you-straight? with a woman bookseller who has been one of her best customers, the bookseller quotes one of Israel’s Parker lines - at which point the date suddenly turns sour; Israel makes her excuses and goes. You get the feeling that she’s never really thought about the letters beyond the fact that she can make money off them, and suddenly she’s realizing that these words may turn into famous quotes, included in collections of correspondence, written about in biographies perhaps. She takes enough pride in the biographer’s craft that this gives her - nothing so definite as pause - but a moment of unease, at least.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is that rare beast where the main characters are queer - Israel is a lesbian, while Jack Hawk is gay - and their sexuality is acknowledged, but not the main point. Israel might have had a less adversarial relationship with society if she had been straight and therefore subject to less social disapproval - but you get the feeling she was always going to be a short-tempered asshole.

It’s not just the literary forging. Israel’s emotional growth appears to have arrested at about the age of fifteen. She takes a childish delight in prank calls, for instance, snickering at a pay phone with Jack Hawk as they call an irritating bookstore clerk to tell him (in the guise of a neighbor) that his apartment is on fire, or phoning her agent in the guise of Nora Ephron, because her agent doesn't take her calls anymore but will take Ephron's.

She has a couple of soft spots: she loves her cat, and she becomes fond of Jack Hawk, who shares her irreverent yet bitter view of the world. (Much of the humor in the film comes from their biting witticisms. Small wonder that she chose to forge letters by Dorothy Parker.) But on the whole she’s harsh, mean-spirited, and - perhaps most difficult of all to portray sympathetically - petty.

Melissa McCarthy’s great triumph is that you do, or I least I did, come to care about Israel, and to want good things for her, even as it becomes increasingly clear that her entire personality is one big This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. I was sorry when her date with the bookseller went south, even though a successful relationship might end up implicating the innocent duped bookseller; I shuddered as the evidence of Israel’s wrongdoing began to tighten around her neck, even though I didn’t want her forgeries to remain forever undetected.

It’s therefore a pleasure to learn, in the end credits, that forging other people’s words finally gave Israel her own story to tell: she found success through the publication of Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger. I have to read it.

Profile

osprey_archer: (Default)
osprey_archer

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 67
8 910 11 121314
15 1617 18 192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 22nd, 2025 04:12 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios