After a succession of duds – none more wince-inducing than The Happytime Murders – if you had offered me a free ticket to see Melissa McCarthy’s latest vehicle I would have responded with her character’s opening retort: “F**k off!”

Bucks she has in abundance, control over her career is tight through the establishment of On The Day production company with her husband Ben Falcone and crowds flock to her movies in droves. Yet she rarely tickles my funny bone and often tests my patience.

Which is not to say I don’t rate her – I do, immensely, and think she has great comedic and dramatic flare à la John Candy as demonstrated in the laugh-out-loud Bridesmaids and the bittersweet St. Vincent – it’s just that her creative choices are often poor. Piss poor.

Not so Can You Ever Forgive Me? by screenwriters Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said) and Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) which based on the memoir of the same name by Lee Israel is a perfect fit for both McCarthy and her co-star Richard E. Grant who hams it up wonderfully as the coke-sniffing, spliff-smoking Jack “Big Cock” Hock.

Desperate times, they say, calls for desperate measures. And no one is more desperate than Lee Israel (McCarthy). Fired from her job due to institutional “ageism” (though perhaps rampant alcoholism and four-lettered tirades hastened her departure), behind in her rent of a fly-infested apartment and unable to foot the vet bills for her beloved pussy, her life has all the makings of a Country and Western wrist-slasher.

And just to inch her even closer to the edge of the ledge, she’s been on her lonesome ownsome for many a year since her ex-girlfriend Elaine (Anna Deavere Smith) grew tired of swinging a pick axe at her granite defences and her once-successful career as a biographer has hit the buffers harder than she has hit the bottle – which is saying something.

Three choices are put to her by her blunt agent Marjorie (Jane Curtin): be a nicer person, promote herself at cocktail parties or get a real job. None of which appeal.

Then – eureka! – she seizes upon the idea of forging famous signatures, appending them to fake letters which she has written in the style of their supposed authors (Fanny Bryce, Noel Coward, Dorothy Parker) and selling them to unsuspecting collectors for a handsome fee. Hock joins in and actual letters are stolen from the archives and added to the mix; but the authorities cotton on and a subpoena is issued. The best laid schemes, dot dot dot.

McCarthy and Grant are perfectly cast and the chemistry between them – both dramatically and comedically – is effervescent. In stark contrast to the dingy and grubby tight corners they box themselves into, as shot by actor-turned-cinematographer Brandon Trost (The Disaster Artist).

Kudos to director Marielle Heller for restraining McCarthy’s natural clowning and elevating Grant’s theatricality to the brink of believability, while drawing from both great depth and subtlety. (Dolly Wells does jolly well, too, as the bookish love interest Anna.)

And the one-liners and withering looks, though sparing, are joyous. As is this film which has garnered three surprising Oscar nominations for Best Actor, Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay. I don’t think they’ll triumph, but any film in which the protagonist is affectionately referred to as a “horrid c**t” gets my vote any day.

Director: Marielle Heller
Writers: Nicole Holofcener (screenplay by), Jeff Whitty (screenplay by)
Stars: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells
Peter Callaghan
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