SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Taking place in 1990s New York, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a true story about former author Lee Israel who gained notoriety for forging letters by deceased celebrities. The film follows a negative character arc, showing the fate of a person who constantly denied Truth and pursued Lie until it was too late.
The writing managed to put forth a great display of our protagonist's character through clear scenes. Her kleptomania tendency, aversion towards socializing, alcoholism, poor financial status, previous stature as a New York Times Bestseller author and current rundown life condition on almost every aspect were conveyed to us effectively via sequences after sequences. While the core storyline of her ways of forging documents and how it progressively went down a serious path of no return were engaging, Israel's (Melissa McCarthy) relationship with Jack (Richard E. Grant) weren't entirely interesting to watch, especially the ice-breaking phase. Both of their performances were great by the way.
There were points in the plot where certain events felt as if it happened abruptly. The first one would be Jack walking into a bar and meeting Israel there - this particular incident seemed forced because it didn't occur organically as the narrative was walking us through the life of our main character step-by-step. The same can be said about the FBI alert on her which came quite suddenly too - maybe this was the point: to turn the world against us as it did for the protagonist.