*****QUEER THURSDAYS*****In a dramatic turn, Melissa McCarthy portrays a broke, brilliant lesbian writer turned forger.
It’s 1991 in New York City and Lee Israel (McCarthy) is a washed up biographer who has painted herself into a corner of obscurity. She’s gay, she’s mean, she’s lonely, and the only friend she has in the world is her cat.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? is based on the 2008 memoir by Israel (it’s a true story!) and McCarthy is brilliant as the dowdy dyke/crazy cat lady with a criminal gift for mimicking wit; it’s shockingly refreshing to have such a marginal character embody a struggling woman’s perspective. [The film] is a coming out tale—not so much about sexuality as about authenticity: be yourself and tell the truth about yourself; don’t expect to live through or off other people. For someone with intimacy issues that’s easier said than done. The irony is, of course, that to find out who she really is Israel must lose her way completely, penning in excess of 400 fake missives impersonating other people, before she understands what she’s made of.
This film is a bittersweet delight and McCarthy shines in a role that should be thoroughly unappealing but isn’t. In fact, she delivers a kind of queer, feminist anti-hero that I have not seen before. Israel doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her and she’s not sorry for what she does. Plus, it’s a real pleasure to watch a film where iPhones, sex, and young, beautiful people are completely absent—and a middle-aged lesbian character sitting at an antique typewriter is the subject of a bravura performance.
(Merryn Johns, curve)
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