Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018, Marielle Heller) (Patreon)

Bit of a bait-and-switch, but mostly in a good way. As an Amazing True Story, it runs into the standard literary-biopic wall; what's interesting about Israel's crimes—her gift for credibly impersonating the epistolary prose style of famous authors—doesn't translate well to the screen, forcing Holofcener and Whitty to lean heavily on the delighted reactions of her various buyers. Nor does Heller seem much invested in the practical details: artificially aging the letters, finding old typewriters that match writers' known models, etc. That stuff is there, but only as an amuse-bouche; other directors would have made a full-course meal of it. Instead, this is fundamentally a character study of a semi-functional misanthrope, digging deep into the aspects of Israel's personality that forced her into fraud in the first place. McCarthy wouldn't have been my choice for the lead—even at her most restrained, she still tends to telegraph; I keep imagining how superb Ellen Barkin might have been—but she's willing to be thoroughly disagreeable, and only occasionally pleads for viewer sympathy (most notably in Israel's abortive romance with the bookseller). And while the narrative arc is redemptive, it's the prickly touches that linger. Even after Israel gives her climactic courtroom speech*, taking weirdly self-aggrandizing responsibility for her actions, she still reflexively flinches at her lawyer's reassuring touch, and doesn't subsequently relax. 

* Delivered in a courtroom that's completely empty apart from the defendant, the attorneys, and the judge—a note of realism that I can't recall ever seeing in a movie before, and which I greatly appreciated.