Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant give excellent performances in ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me.’
Based on the life of book author m, and fluidly directed by Marielle Heller, ‘Can you Ever Forgive Me,’ based on the late Israel’s memoir, tells about the misadventures of Israel’s life. She was a Manhattanite who didn’t have much money to rub together, so she starts forging signatures of famous people and then sells them to collectors, raking in big money.
Questions start arising about her charade, and soon enough she has to pull back, and then enlists her gay best friend Jack (Richard E. Grant – in his best performance ever) to take over her sales duties to pawn more fakes to the collectors. It’s early 1990’s New York City, and one gets the feeling that anything can happen then (‘if you can make it there you can make it anywhere’), and that Israel will rise above it all, but in the end we know what is coming.
But before, director Heller (working from a screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty), perfectly sets the mood and vibe of New York, with bookshops almost at every corner (long gone now no thanks to the internet). Yes, we can definitely forgive Israel for what she’s done, because it has brought us this fine movie. McCarthy and Grant have been nominated for Oscars for their roles, let’s hope that if anyone of them wins, it will be Grant. He is just superb in his role – debonair, chilled, and like a fine wine, getting better with age.
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