Super. Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant make a wonderful tag-team in this fact-based story about a washed up ‘Popular’ biographer and a fading gay ‘toyboy’ who meet over drinks at a dive bar and gleefully fall into self-destructive criminal behavior. It starts by accident when McCarthy, at wit’s end financially, ‘lifts’ a letter from a famous author stuck in a book she’s using at a research library, then sells to a Rare Books/Autograph store. Soon, she’s forging these ‘collectibles’ and using Grant as a front to avoid suspicion from the buyers. Naturally, it all ends badly, as laid out in a tidy script (by Nicole Holofcener & Jeff Whitty) hardly absolving the pair from some pretty atrocious behavior aimed inward & out. Yet long before their comeuppance, the situation & relationship has grown, tough, funny & unexpectedly touching. Special stuff, lovingly directed by Marielle Heller in a style that skips right past the 1990s setting, harking back to a 1970s filmmaking style in look, pacing & tone. A smart move, like everything in here.
DOUBLE-BILL: While not really comparable, 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD/’87 (with Anne Bancroft & Anthony Hopkins) has a similar obsessive small bookshop/book-lovers vibe to it. If only the film was half as good as Helene Hanff’s delightful little memoir.
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