Review: "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

By Roger Ebert

For virtually every kind of human activity, there’s a subculture somewhere that fetishizes it and regards its doings as more precious than it really is. My things are movies and jalopies; other people are into tattoos or vintage furniture or what have you.

If you’re ever tempted to scoff at somebody else’s little obsessions, remember that they might find yours laughable, too.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” is a smart and sensitive comedy that’s as black as pitch. Melissa McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a formerly successful writer who’s hit the skids in 1991 at age 51. Unemployed and unable to pay her rent, she takes an old letter Katharine Hepburn penned to her -- she wrote a magazine profile of the actress in the 1960s -- down to a rare bookstore and sells it for some quick cash.

Lee soon realizes she has stumbled into the toniest of hobbyist communities: people who collect personal letters from celebrities. While researching a biography of stage comedienne Fanny Brice, she comes across a couple of routine letters, which she pilfers. The kindly owner of a tiny bookshop, Anna (Dolly Wells), offers $75 for one, saying it would be more if it weren’t so dull. You can practically see the light bulb popping up over Lee’s head.

She shunts the other Fanny letter into her typewriter and adds a hilarious P.S. in the actress’ voice; this time she gets $350. She’s off to the races.

Lee is, to use the nice word, a pill. McCarthy, known for her exuberant characters and winsome get-ups, seems to be practically drained of shape and color. All of Lee’s clothes look like bags, and her brown hair hangs like a carpet that has rarely seen a brush, or shampoo. She swears a lot, drinks even more, and yelling seems to be her default volume.

Her agent (a delicious Jane Curtain) explains that it would probably be best if Lee found some other line of work. She thinks she has. Soon Lee is cranking out ersatz letters from Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward. She sets up an entire operation, buying vintage typewriters for each celebrity she’s impersonating.

Lee does her research and becomes very good at mimicking the literary stars’ voices. Top dealers are clamoring for more. Rather than being wracked with guilt, Lee realizes she’s doing the best writing of her life.

Her drinking buddy and eventual partner is Jack Hock -- was there ever a more fitting name? -- a British scallywag played with great glee by Richard E. Grant. An aging queen who never wants the party to end, he’s basically spent his whole life grifting in one way or another. When questions about some of Lee’s letters force her to stop selling them herself, she finds that Jack gets even higher prices through his twinkly schmoozing.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me” is based on Israel’s own memoir, adapted for the screen by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, directed by Marielle Heller. It works on a lot of levels, but is best as a character study of a thoroughly unlikable person.

McCarthy and the filmmakers don’t attempt to smooth down Lee’s rough ages. Here is a woman who was all rough edges. She’s been pushed around and beat down all her life, and her reaction is to push back and punch back. We may not like Lee -- hardly anyone does -- but we find ourselves growing an odd sort of regard for her.

When she’s finally caught -- no spoilers here; there wouldn’t be a book or movie without that -- Lee says that it’s probably been the happiest time of her life. People were paying good money for her words, even if they thought somebody else, somebody more noteworthy, was doing the writing.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could admire a wonderful piece of creativity without worrying whose name was attached to it?

**P.S. If you need me to tell you that Roger didn't really write this, then my pun has been for naught.**

Video review: "Enough Said"

James Gandolfini may have not been most people's notion for a romantic lead, with looks like an ex-jock gone to pot and wallowing in anger. But the late actor showed just how much charisma he harbored in his balding, paunchy body in "Enough Said," an affecting romantic-drama from writer/director Nicole Holofcener.

The film stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Eva, a 50-ish masseuse who's divorced, single and has a teen daughter about to leave for college. At a party she meets Albert (Gandolfini), who's in a very similar life situation. They have a date that turns into a tenuous relationship, which seems to be going fine until a strange coincidence throws them off.

Eva learns that her new friend (Catherine Keener), who constantly bad-mouths her ex-husband, used to be married to Albert. So the horrible guy she's been hearing about is actually her new beau.

Logic says that shouldn't really make a difference, but in Holofcener's carefully observant story, it most certainly does. The film understands how lonely, damaged people react when letting their guard down for a new relationship.

The actors acquit themselves wonderfully, including the textured supporting performances by Toni Collette, Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson and Tavi Gevinson. One of the nice things about Holofcener's movies is that she populates them with fleshy, believable characters.

Easily of the year's best indie films, "Enough Said" falls into the "don't-miss" category.

Alas, video extras are sorely lacking. The DVD comes with only the theatrical trailer and a few promotional featurettes. Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition and you get a "Second Takes" feature.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "Enough Said"

Love is rarely like it is in the movies, except for “Enough Said,” an observant new comedy-drama from writer/director Nicole Holofcener. It stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini as middle-aged divorced parents who enter into a tentative little romantic dance. Their relationship is both awkward and magical, and very authentically adult in its ups-and-downs, and side-to-sides.

No incongruous meet-cute, no breathless protestations of affection or other tropes of cinematic romance. Just a funny, faithful look at the real ways in which older, damaged people struggle with being single.

Holofcener has made a career exploring the inner lives of women, while navigating between hefty topics like the way women are afflicted by insecurity (“Lovely & Amazing”) and economic envy/superiority (“Friends with Money,” “Please Give”). I’ve always enjoyed the fact that her female characters are full-blooded and complicated, and her films deal with all their relationships – friends, parents, co-workers – rather than being obsessed with just the romantic ones.

Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva, a massage therapist with a precocious daughter who’s about to go off to college, which is freaking out the parent way more than the child. While at a dinner party she’s introduced to Albert (Gandolfini), an acerbic-but-warm guy. They hardly hit it off, each joking there’s no one at the party they’re attracted to, but nonetheless they go out on a first date that goes well enough.

Albert isn’t really Eva’s idea of a hottie – bald, a step past paunchy, grizzled and gray. The fact that Eva gives him a chance says something about Eva, and the fact Holofcener would cast the late Gandolfini as a romantic lead says something about her. Eva is willing to embrace a man who is a far throw from her ideal, which is a tacit recognition of her own imperfections.

Their courtship is a portrait of defensiveness that gradually gives way to a deepening bond. Too old to be coy, more wary than hopeful, they slowly let their guards done enough to fall in love.

Then Holofcener throws us a clever twist. The same night she met Albert, she also picked up a new client: Marianne (Catherine Keener), a successful poet. After a few massages they start to bond as friends, talking about their children, dating and divorces. Marianne repeatedly dumps on her ex-husband as an unambitious loser who’s too fat, and lousy in bed to boot.

Then Eva realizes that Albert is Marianne’s ex-husband. So this awful guy she’s been hearing about is actually her new boyfriend.

This sets off a strange love/hate triangle. Eva adores Marianne and Albert, but the fact they despise each other ends up poisoning the way she treats her new boyfriend. She starts making little quips about his undisciplined eating habits and inability to whisper. “Why do I feel like I just spent the evening with my ex-wife?” Albert asks after one acrimonious night out.

Gandolfini, Keener and Louis-Dreyfus both give layered, terrific performances. Ditto for Toni Collette as Eva’s friend, a married woman vexed by her husband and her maid. I also adored the three young actresses playing the daughters and a best friend -- Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson and Tavi Gevinson.

Eventually things come to a head, but they don’t go down in a predictable, sitcom-y sort of way. Albert’s reaction in particular is notable for its understated, genuine feel.

“Enough Said” is a funny, sad and heart-warming experience – much like actual, messy family lives. It’s a great catch.

Video review: "Please Give"

Kate, a thriving New York City businesswoman, offers a man her dinner leftovers, plaintively asking if he is hungry. He is late middle age, African-American, and his clothes have seen better days.

The beatific expression of pity on Kate's face is shattered when the man nods toward the swank restaurant in front of him. "I'm waiting for a table," he says haughtily.

This delicious scene represents the essence of "Please Give," a black comedy from writer/director Nicole Holofcener about how sometimes even charity is selfish.

Kate, well-played by Catherine Keener, is hooked on pity. She doles out $20 bills to the homeless, but won't buy her teen daughter the expensive pair of jeans she's dying for. Kate volunteers at a nursing home, but is asked to leave after a few hours because her fretful concern for the aged residents brings them down.

She and husband Alex (a spot-on Oliver Platt) run a business selling vintage furniture they bought off the bereaved offspring of the recently dead, who didn't know what they had. Perhaps Kate's runaway giving is an unconscious offset for their outrageous markups.

Their next-door neighbor is 91-year-old Andra, whose space Kate and Alex will take over whenever she kicks off. Andra has two granddaughters: Rebecca and Mary (Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet, respectively) who are mirror images of altruism. Rebecca gives so much of herself there isn't much left for a real life, while Mary is following in Andra's nasty, self-centered footsteps.

"Please Give" is filled with delightful performances, but I found it hard to connect with any of the characters. The film's deeper theme seems to be about how people can be generous on the one hand and cutthroat on the other.

For Kate, everything's a competition -- even who can be the nicest to the less fortunate.

Video goodies are not so good.

The extras are rather minimal. There's a roundup of outtakes from production, a behind-the-scenes tour on the set, and clips from a Q&A with Holofcener.

Anyone else see the irony of a movie called "Please Give" being released with measly set of bonus features?

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 1.5 stars

Review: "Please Give"

The people we meet in "Please Give" are almost uniformly unpleasant in some way or another. But they hide their meanness behind a veneer of beneficence that is so dear to them, they actually believe they're nice.

Take Kate, more or less the main character, played by Catherine Keener. She's middle-aged, successful, with a husband and teen daughter. Kate literally cannot pass a homeless person on the Manhattan street without giving them money -- her need to be generous is so consuming that on occasion she mistakenly offers cash to regular people minding their own business.

See, Kate is not attached so much to giving as the feeling of superiority she derives from helping total strangers. For her, pity is a like a drug.

Perhaps it's the guilt she feels from the business in which she and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) are partners. They buy old furniture from the children of old people who have died, and then resell it at a considerable markup as vintage treasures.

They're essentially upscale ambulance chasers, cheating the bereaved who don't know what they've got.

In fact, Alex and Kate have bought the apartment next door to theirs from Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert), a sour-pussed 91-year-old, with the intention of knocking through the walls to expand whenever the old lady kicks off. They act nice to Andra, offering to make trips to the drugstore for her. But everyone, including Andra, knows they're just counting the days until they can finally have their master suite.

Andra's granddaughters are Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and Mary (Amanda Peet), who live together in quiet conflict. Mary is a cosmetologist who doesn't believe in hiding her antipathy toward her grandmother, who has the elderly habit of saying incredibly hateful or racist things.

Andra may indeed be a nasty old bitch, but Mary has a few decades' head start.

Rebecca, on the other hand, is sweet to her core, even if she's a bit distant to those around her. Rebecca works as a radiology assistant, spending her days squishing women's boobs into the scanning machine. She shares such intimacy with her patients, Rebecca finds little zeal for it in her own life.

Kate and Alex have a 15-year-old daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele), an awkward kid with a terrible acne problem and a lust for a $235 pair of jeans. Kate's generosity to strangers is galling to Abby, who at one point snatches a $20 bill out of a homeless man's hand, furious that her mother is more giving to a street person than her own daughter.

"Please Give" is written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, who's previously made three other movies with Keener, including "Lovely & Amazing" and "Friends with Money." Like her other works, it's a highly personal film about women and their relationships, their flaws and complexities.

I was thoroughly engaged the entire time I spent with this terrific cast, who deliver sensitive and brave performances. But I kept feeling the movie pushing me away, as if I did not belong inside the circle of people I was observing.

It's hard to say exactly what the film is about. There's an exploration of the New York City mindset, in which people seem to be in a constant, unspoken competition with each other, scrapping for the biggest apartment with the nicest things in it -- and not necessarily even things they like, just stuff that other people will think is nice.

Mostly, though, the unstated theme touches on how even when people offer a hand to others, they're sometimes still being selfish. I just wish "Please Give" could have been a little more generous with itself.

2.5 stars out of four