First and foremost, go see this film for Melissa McCarthy's performance. My initial reaction was "finally." Could it be the end of all of her prior dopey performances in lame comedies? Here she's taken on a serious role based on a memoir of the same name by the late Lee Israel. Israel was for a relatively short time a successful author of biographies including such luminaries as Katherine Hepburn and Tallulah Bankhead until flaming out on an unsuccessful one about Estée Lauder. By the early 90s Israel was broke and was unable to pay the rent on her west side apartment in Manhattan.
The "fun" begins when Israel decides to begin forging letters of famous literary lights beginning with Dorothy Parker. McCarthy plays Israel the way she was: a ballsy curmudgeon whose amoral behavior proves quite entertaining. She's joined by Richard E. Grant as Jack Hock, a gay ne'er-do-well who ends up assisting Israel in her nefarious activities (don't be surprised if Grant wins an Oscar for best supporting actor!).
The plot follows Israel as she first cons a young bookshop employee, Anna, who's convinced that Israel's literary forgeries are real. Israel ends up rebuffing Anna's romantic overtures. The tension heightens when Israel is blacklisted after one of her Noel Coward forgeries is questioned as a fake. This is where Hock is conscripted to sell Israel's letters.
The narrative might have petered out but a few more plot twists keep things hurtling to the inevitable climax. Israel and Hock have a falling out after Israel's cat dies while Hock is cat sitting at the apartment. Israel reverts to stealing original letters at research libraries and finally is arrested by the FBI.
It's kind of refreshing to have a film where the gay characters aren't all noble (a sub-plot involves Israel and a former lesbian lover having a potential reconciliation talk that goes nowhere). More problematic is that Israel's proclivities are held up as entertainment-one shouldn't forget that what she did was criminal in nature. Nonetheless, one of the themes here is forgiveness as Israel does express remorse at her sentencing in a Federal court. Notably she still expresses pride that people actually believed her letters were real, but ultimately recognized that others were hurt by her activities.
McCarthy's performance is quite good precisely because you want to see how far she takes her character down the path of perdition. Director Marielle Heller ultimately is correct in convincing us that Israel, despite her base proclivities, provided an in-depth social critique: and that of course is people will believe anything, with dollar signs before their eyes!
The "fun" begins when Israel decides to begin forging letters of famous literary lights beginning with Dorothy Parker. McCarthy plays Israel the way she was: a ballsy curmudgeon whose amoral behavior proves quite entertaining. She's joined by Richard E. Grant as Jack Hock, a gay ne'er-do-well who ends up assisting Israel in her nefarious activities (don't be surprised if Grant wins an Oscar for best supporting actor!).
The plot follows Israel as she first cons a young bookshop employee, Anna, who's convinced that Israel's literary forgeries are real. Israel ends up rebuffing Anna's romantic overtures. The tension heightens when Israel is blacklisted after one of her Noel Coward forgeries is questioned as a fake. This is where Hock is conscripted to sell Israel's letters.
The narrative might have petered out but a few more plot twists keep things hurtling to the inevitable climax. Israel and Hock have a falling out after Israel's cat dies while Hock is cat sitting at the apartment. Israel reverts to stealing original letters at research libraries and finally is arrested by the FBI.
It's kind of refreshing to have a film where the gay characters aren't all noble (a sub-plot involves Israel and a former lesbian lover having a potential reconciliation talk that goes nowhere). More problematic is that Israel's proclivities are held up as entertainment-one shouldn't forget that what she did was criminal in nature. Nonetheless, one of the themes here is forgiveness as Israel does express remorse at her sentencing in a Federal court. Notably she still expresses pride that people actually believed her letters were real, but ultimately recognized that others were hurt by her activities.
McCarthy's performance is quite good precisely because you want to see how far she takes her character down the path of perdition. Director Marielle Heller ultimately is correct in convincing us that Israel, despite her base proclivities, provided an in-depth social critique: and that of course is people will believe anything, with dollar signs before their eyes!