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When critics take a hard look at comedians like Melissa McCarthy, we often touch on familiar qualities like timing, elegance, and resilient posture. But we're also talking about acting. Since transitioning from the television stage to film, McCarthy has repeatedly broadened her acting field and excitedly helped break down stereotypes about who can become a movie star. No movie suits her better than spy (2015), in which she plays Susan, a timid CIA analyst who is sent on a bizarre mission that allows McCarthy to think in pieces and then show off proudly.
The key to the fun in "Female Spy" lies in how it uses the traditional techniques of genre films, showing McCarthy's talent while subverting the stereotypical routines of genre films themselves. Susan (McCarthy's character in the film) contains a lot of content, first self-preservation (she suppresses her anger) and then a full expression of her nature. In carrying out her mission, she reluctantly accepts several disheveled disguised identities with a miserable wig—and then a change in the way others think of her—and then turns into a sexy, foul-mouthed fantasy identity of her own design. As Susan let go of her hair and the taboo, McCarthy began to let loose. Her voice was loud, her flying hands were clenched into fists, and her cupid baby face was fully transformed into Medusa. McCarthy isn't just playing a woman, she's all of us with a vengeful purpose.
Lee Israel is an interesting man. She shares the same fast and angry witty language as some of McCarthy's characters, such as Tammy in Tommy (2014) and Mullins in The Heat (2013). But Lee is a real person, "Can You Forgive Me?" 》（can you ever forgive me? 2018) is not a comedy. Nor is it exactly a biopic, but rather a highly reductive part of queer and literary life in late 20th-century New York, through an anachronistic outsider story, into a crime project film.
Lee is a less easy person to get along with. She is rude, extremely narcissistic and self-abandoned. She is estranged from friends and her grasp of ethics and morality is as fragile as her grasp of sobriety. McCarthy was reluctant to turn her story—which involved her faltering career as a writer in exchange for a lucrative job as a forger of famous writers' letters—into a parable of healing or redemption.
It's about how Lee and her little buddy Jack Hawke (richard e. grant with the wonderful show) gamble with survival and rebel against the fate prepared for them by an indifferent world. The title of the film raises an honest question. Maybe you can't forgive Lee's mistakes and lies, can't forgive her for not considering the words and feelings of others. But you can't forget her.
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Veteran film critic for The New York Times
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