by Chris Feil

Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the rarest of comedies, as lovely as it is scabrous, and able to craft a film cohering as many dualities and tonal contradictions in its construction as its protagonist. The film stars Melissa McCarthy as the shamed Lee Israel, once noted biographer and journalist whose late career stumbles found her forging letters of noted dead writers and famous personalities.