{"id":7542,"date":"2018-12-08T16:30:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-08T06:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/?p=7542"},"modified":"2018-12-08T09:56:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T23:56:54","slug":"can-you-ever-forgive-me-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/can-you-ever-forgive-me-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Ever Forgive Me? – movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went into Can You Ever Forgive Me?<\/em> with almost no expectations, except those that came with knowing Melissa McCarthy was in it. But the serious-looking poster they were projecting before it began had me surprised and curious.<\/p>\n

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\nThe film centres on Lee Israel (McCarthy) \u2013 a fifty-one-year-old writer and nihilistic cat lady. She tries to make a living writing first-person biographies about famous figures from the 1940s. Down on her luck, she stumbles across a letter folded between the pages of a library book as she\u2019s doing research for her new work. After selling the letter for a high price she – along with her hyper-gay drinking buddy, Jack Hok (Richard E. Grant) – realises the potential letter forgery has in making the money she needs to get her life back together.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let the promotional material fool you: this film is a comedy more than anything. That shouldn’t be surprising, nor is it to the movie\u2019s detriment. The characters are all snide and a lot of the comedy comes from them butting heads and taking swipes at each other with foul-mouthed joy.<\/p>\n

Marielle Heller, a virtual unknown, proves herself capable of directing something entertaining with widespread appeal. Coupled with Rogan and Franco\u2019s go-to cinematographer, Brandon Trost, the film has the air of a comedy but with a stone-faced facade. The colours are moody and muted and the cinematography is obtuse but this is used to keep the weight of the drama intact and allows the comedy to come purely from the dialogue and performances.<\/p>\n