Copia originale

This is a very different story as it for once gives a true life crime story of someone falling into crime to pay the bills and seeing if from their angle without dressing it up or looking for empathy and sympathy for the perpetrator. It is not embellished too much to make it overly dramatic as Hollywood too often does, which I think makes the film, it is a quite ordinary but great tale.

Mellisa McCarthy and Richard E Grant are both superb in their roles. McCarthy makes you believe the character was written just for her and Grant plays an excellent British eccentric, again a role that you almost feel no one else could have played.

One of the best films of 2019 so far for me.

I didn't know what to expect with this film. I was very pleasantly surprised. This movie is not a comedy and the performers did a great job of capturing people who are not always made for this world. Melissa McCarthy gives a impressive performance as Lee Israel and Richard Grant is wonderful as her ne'er do well friend and accomplice. I really like the atmosphere and the ability to capture the grit and seediness of New York in the early 90's. Marielle Heller and McCarthy did a fantastic job of taking someone with all the likability of my mother in law and making her sympathetic.

A great story, which made me sigh and left me warm. Richard E Grant was superb, doing the Richard he does do well, his eyes overflowing with feeling at times. Melissa embodied and created her character equally. Superb.

Some cracking quotes such as: Lounge Singer: This next song goes out to all the agoraphobic junkies who couldn't be here tonight.

I had laughs, sighs, a gasp or two and a cracking story. Fully entertained, I loved it.

8/10

I must first confess that I was pleasantly surprised by the exceptional performance of the actress Melissa McCarthy who is (was?) almost-systematically accustomed to cinematographic pieces of junk such as Life of the Party - Una mamma al college (2018), Ghostbusters (2016) or Charlie's Angels (2000). I sincerely hope that this film will mark a turning point in her career, with a before and an after.

Then, the subject is not really bankable: no superhero, no sexy actress, no Computer-Generated Imagery. In addition, the main characters are two insignificant loosers who will attract the wrath of the FBI because of their secret activity of a two-penny faker and will then be within an inch of jail. Of course, with such a script, the movie will probably not be a hit at the world box-office.

Nevertheless, the movie is delightfully excellent and describes with subtlety and sensitivity an ineluctable descent into the abyss. Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) was a writer with some success. One of her books was even mentioned in the New York Times best sellers. But, success is now part of the past and she regularly has huge difficulties in paying her rent. By chance, in an old book of a public library, she discovers a real typed letter from a well-known female writer. Begins then an improvised career of a scammer with false letters from real personalities that she skillfully engineers within her shabby apartment.

As a synthesis, Copia originale (2018) is excellent! 8/9 of 10

Melissa McCarthy is not known for her dramatic roles, but this film might change that. It's the gripping story of Lee Israel, a struggling Manhattan writer who in the early 1990s undertook the extraordinary step of falsifying letters from famous people to make ends meet.

McCarthy is an eye-opener here as the hard-drinking, acid-tongued Israel, a miserable middle-aged woman who sought friendship in precious few souls, one of them being a mysterious figure on the Upper West Side portrayed with fierce verve by Richard E. Grant, who winds up becoming something of an accomplice to her enterprise. She is desperate to pay her bills. His murky story becomes more known as the film progresses. The two of them are an odd couple, as they both have setbacks and misery to look back upon, but their pessimism and misanthrope are not equally shared.

This film will offer a glimpse of nostalgia for anyone who remembers New York in a now quaint era, when struggling writers still lived as adults in Manhattan, when life was endearingly bleak and bookstores were not yet massive chains. That sense of atmosphere I greatly admire. Recommended to anyone who enjoys a scathing story of literary scheming.