By In a crowded field of films 'based on true events' at this year's Academy Awards, the story of literary forger Lee Israel is perhaps the best - and most likely to be overlooked.
Adapted from her memoir of the same name, Can You Ever Forgive Me? stars Melissa McCarthy as the wonderfully repellent Israel, a bitter woman who would famously sit in the corner of a gay bar in Manhattan with her headphones on just to avoid conversation. In desperate need of money, and with a career under her own name flatlining, she turns to forging the letters of celebrated writers like Noël Coward and Ernest Hemingway.
McCarthy inhabits the role completely, leaving no trace of the slapstick comedy of Bridesmaids or Spy. She's still hilarious, but wryly so - her wit as caustic as the postscripts she adds onto Dorothy Parker's letters to make them more valuable.
Her accomplice Jack Hock is played pitch perfectly by Richard E. Grant who returns to the same sozzled, theatrical brilliance of Withnail and I. They make a perfect pair of misanthropes, him insulting her crimes of fashion and her interrupting what you think is a meaningful moment to admit she wanted to trip him up. Together they are pair of swindlers to rival Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, perfect for our scam-obsessed times.
Last week, McCarthy and Grant were nominated for Oscars for their performances, with the only other nod for the film in the 'Best Adapted Screenplay' category. That the film failed to earn a 'Best Picture' or 'Best Director' nomination is disappointing when the Academy is seemingly trying to correct its historic lack of recognition for female filmmakers.
This year's crop of directorial nominees features not a single woman, with Debra Granik and Josie Rourke also left out for Leave No Trace and Mary Queen of Scots respectively. In Can You Ever Forgive Me? director Marielle Heller creates the world of a woman who doesn't bend to the will of anyone - even Israel's editor, to whom she impersonates Nora Ephron in order to get on the phone before shouting "Starfucker!" at her.
Last year Greta Gerwig's Ladybird earned a score of nominations at the Oscars but netted no wins. In a piece for IndieWire, Chris O'Falt noted that that while Ladybird "fits the bill of a movie that is celebrated for its script and award-contending performances" - the exact nominations Heller's film has received - it doesn't "fit easily into the classic sense of great directing". In other words: we see the overtly cinematic styles of directors like Christopher Nolan or Alfonso Cuarón as great directing, but constructing excellent characters, less so.
Cinema circles are more comfortable when women make films which conform to more masculine styles of directing, like Katheryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker - not coincidentally the only woman ever to win the directorial Oscar prize.
Throw in the fact Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a comedy, and you wonder if it ever had a shot. But it is so much more than that: a character study with an ending that persuades you to care about someone you probably find it hard to like. In a year where films with polarised audience reactions and middling views have been nominated for the top prize, it feels unfairly shut out of the race.
'Can You Ever Forgive Me?' is out 1 February
