Melissa McCarthy has never been very cuddly onscreen—her comic persona is one of aggressive anger—but even so I was unprepared for the caustic misanthrope she plays in Can You Ever Forgive Me? As Lee Israel, a real-life biographer who forged personal letters from celebrities and sold them to collectors, McCarthy buries herself under ugly, unclean sweaters and glares at people as a matter of habit. The snarling comic insults we’ve come to expect are here, but she’s added a physical insularity. Whenever someone tries to come near Lee, she instinctively withdraws, or even flinches. Directed by Marielle Heller, Can You Ever Forgive Me? has its funny moments—Richard E. Grant proves to be a sublime comic partner as Jack Hock, a fellow alcoholic who gets roped into Lee’s scheme—but mostly the movie is immensely sad, the story of a woman who deep down desires companionship but just isn’t wired to accept it. (A scene in which Lee reflexively sabotages a date with another woman, beautifully played by Dolly Wells, is heartbreaking.) Can You Ever Forgive Me? makes some gestures toward uplift by its end, but what’s more moving are the occasional moments of grace, as when Jack helps Lee clean her filthy apartment, even though it means stuffing cotton balls in his nostrils to withstand the smell. What feels even more authentic, however, is the overall atmosphere of moroseness. (Much of the narrative takes place in musty book stores over the course of a New York City winter, all captured by Brandon Trost’s purposefully dim cinematography.)