Review: Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (15)
USA 2018  106 mins  Dir: Marielle Heller Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Ben Falcone

Great news for anyone who admires Melissa McCarthy but feels she’s been selling her talents short with all those lame comedies in which she plays a fat woman who falls over a lot. Great news too for anyone who hoped we’d eventually get a sequel of sorts to Withnail and I. Adapted from Lee Israel’s memoir of the same title, The Diary of a Teenage Girl director Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? gives McCarthy her best-ever screen role and puts Richard E. Grant back in seedy barfly mode where he thrives.

“You’re a horrid cunt, Lee.”

“You too, Jack.”

It’s a touching exchange – and they’re both right, of course. The miracle of Can You Ever Forgive Me? is that the best part of two hours spent in their company proves to be so thoroughly enjoyable. She’s a misanthropic lesbian writer of biographies that no one wants to read (Tallulah Bankhead, Estée Lauder), who’s suffering from writer’s block, resides in a disgusting, fly-infested Manhattan apartment that stinks of cat shit because, well, that’s what it’s full of, and can barely afford to pay the rent. He’s an aging, dissolute, gay barfly (“Jack Hock – big cock,” as he introduces himself, with that familiar wolfish grin) who somehow manages to scrape a living as a low-level coke dealer (“mostly laxative,” he confides proudly). This embittered, impecunious odd couple hang out in dingy bars to rail against the world and foment mischief, having bonded over their mutual love of whisky. Trouble is, the aged cat that Lee prefers to virtually all human company needs urgent and expensive veterinary attention. Having ignored her agent’s advice on how to revive her literary career (“Become a nice person, stop drinking…”), she starts flogging possessions and is surprised to discover a thriving, lucrative market for personal letters by literary greats. Before long, she’s hacking out forged missives from Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker, making use of Jack’s immense reserves of low cunning as her partner in literary crime.

The best thing about the bracing script, co-written by Nicole (Friends with Money, Enough Said) Holofcener, is that it offers no special pleading and certainly doesn’t ask us to like these pleasingly obnoxious characters. McCarthy has never been better than she is beneath an unflattering wig as brittle, sozzled, bridge-burning loner Lee, who hates the world in general and Tom Clancy in particular. Grant is also in his element as the sleazy, self-centred Jack, whom it’s hard to resist regarding as Withnail gone to seed. The odd couple element of the storyline is never permitted to get too cute – especially with a spectacular third act betrayal – and there’s no hint of cheesy Hollywood redemption as Lee evinces not the slightest guilt for her crimes, in which many of the dealers are tacitly – and as the delicious payoff reveals – overtly complicit. You’ll laugh. You’ll cringe. You’ll probably need a long, warm, soapy bath afterwards.