Can You Ever Forgive Me?

There's a moment in Can You Ever Forgive Me? where an ill looking Richard E.Grant calls someone a horrid cunt as he leaves a bar. Older viewers will be forgiven for thinking they've fallen into some kind of Withnail & I wormhole when the inevitable shocked laughter leaves their mouths. He's not talking to uncle Monty this time though. He's one half of a pair of fantastic performances in the best film I've seen so far this year.

Lee Israel has fallen on hard times. Writer's block is a very real affliction in her world and her literary agent is avoiding her like the plague because aside from her lack of output, Lee just isn't really a nice person. Her only friends are her old cat Jersey and her new drinking buddy Jack. One day while doing research for her new book in the library she makes a chance discovery and this leads to a whole new money making avenue for her. But it's a risky one that can't go on indefinitely.

I loved this film. And I loved Lee. For all her cutting asides, sarcastic snarls and bitterness at the world I really felt for her. Her desperate loneliness and need for human contact piercing through the armour she's assembled to protect herself from being hurt again. When you can build a film around a humane central character people can empathise with you're onto a winner and if you can get a brilliant actress like Melissa McCarthy to play that part...well then you're flying it. Known for her broad brash characters mostly but here she's a revelation. There's no big set-piece moment designed to get her awards thankfully, it's just her building a believable character and getting us to fall for her no matter how disgracefully she acts. She's just great here, almost chameleon like, hidden under a sea of unkempt hair and beige clothes.

Jack on the other hand is played by Richard E. Grant in full on, turned up to 11 mode. Jack is an outsider too, like Lee he struggles to find a place in the world and when they meet it's like two pieces of a jigsaw fitting together perfectly. The two of them in a bar, drunk during the afternoon, chatting it up, no romantic nonsense getting in the way (Lee's a lesbian, Jack is gay), just two lost souls connecting. A beautiful low key moment. The film is full of instances like this. Lee's budding relationship with a book shop owner, an achingly sad chat with a ex in central park, an apartment clean up, scenes where entire lives and loves are sketched out and we're left to fill in the blanks ourselves. I love it when a film isn't jam packed with exposition when a hint will do. Nicole Holofcener (who directed the brilliant Enough Said) wrote this with Jeff Whitty and they did a magnificent job of it. In other hands it could have been clunky and silly but here it's witty, sad and so compelling.

There's a scene in a book shop where Lee goes on a rant against the popularity of Tom Clancy. Her own writing is a million miles from what's popular now with her latest work supposed to be about Fanny Brice, a vaudeville comedienne. Her interests, her demeanour, everything about her feels out of time, like she would have been happier had she been around 70 years beforehand instead of early 90's Manhattan. It's this lost feeling that comes to her advantage when she kicks off her money making scam and it works perfectly. Here the film turns unexpectedly tense which adds a nice edge to proceedings in between it's cutting laughs and numerous melancholic moments. The scams are well played but happily the story is always more invested in the characters involved in them.

Go see this. You won't be disappointed. Both McCarthy and Grant (along with Holofcener & Whitty) have been nominated for Oscars and all thoroughly deserve their awards if they win them. It's rare these days to see two characters on screen that seem so real. We need more of this sort of thing please.