Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Directed by Marielle Heller
- drama
- crime
- comedy
The story
When a bestselling celebrity biographer is no longer able to get published because she has fallen out of step with current tastes, she turns her art form to deception.
What it’s like
Warm, shabby interiors and dim New York apartments lit by lamps, bar neon and the thin grey light of winter afternoons, with a palette of tobacco browns, faded wool and dusty book-spines. Marielle Heller frames her people in tight, patient two-shots and lets scenes breathe in long static takes, so that a cramped flat or a half-empty bar becomes a place to sit in. The sound is mostly room tone, clinking glasses, typewriter keys and a sparse, wistful piano score that surfaces only now and then. The vibe is wry, bruised and quietly funny, the kind of melancholy that is also a little mischievous, and it suits a late-night watch alone, a rainy weekend, or a slow evening with a drink. The pace is unhurried and conversational, its emotional register dry, and its central arc follows a prickly, self-sabotaging writer slowly and reluctantly learning to let a few unlikely people close. Intensity is low: there is no violence or gore, the swearing and boozy scenes are frank, and the tension is social and emotional rather than physical. It is for viewers who enjoy character studies, literary in-jokes and sharp, humane comedy with a bittersweet undertow.
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