Blueprints: "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"
Friday, February 15, 2019 at 2:00PM by Jorge Molina
Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a subtle study of a woman clinging to relevance in a world that not only has forgotten about her, but never took her into consideration in the first place. It’s about isolation, and loneliness, and people that already live at the margins marginalizing themselves even more. But it is also a rare, realistically moving portrayal of queer friendship; of the friendship of a woman with a man that’s just as forgotten and isolated as she is.
The screenplay adaptation of Lee Israel’s memoir by Jeff Whitty (of Avenue Q fame) and Nicole Holofcener (of many great pictures fame) tackles the relationship between Lee and Jack (Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant in career-best performances) with nuance and bite, and never gives in to "likeability". Whitty and Holofcener know that sometimes friends happen to just not like each other...