It is always a very recurrent subject in movies to explore the lives of writers. Depressed, conflicted, out of money, crazy, obsessed, a long list of issues that most of the time is the fuel for their work. The long list of films goes on, from Misery, Adaptation, Midnight in Paris, Manhattan, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Hours, Naked Lunch, The Shining, Ruby Sparks and The Great Beauty.

Writers are considered virtuosos but also people who have a messed up life, searching the next best-selling novel. One writer, in particular, gain success not by creating her work but by using other people's work and falsified their persona.

Writer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) living in N.Y. and suffering from writers' block after the success of her novel Estée Lauder. Lee is one a really rough patch, dealing with financial troubles and alcoholism.

She is unable to finalize a deal to secure funding for a new biographical book she is forced to sell her personal possessions to pay the rent and make a living. One of the items she has the sell was a letter written by the actress Katherine Hepburn, unable to sell it to a good price she decided to start researching about the writer Fanny Brice and then she finds a letter from Brice folded in a book.

Lee finds inspiration in Brice to forge letters written by deceased writers, which she starts selling at a good price. The scam lasts longer than she thought but some buyers suspect when one letter suggest the sexuality of a famous writer. Her friend Jack Hock ( Richard E. Grant) a drug dealer help her to sell more letters after Lee is blacklisted by her buyers.

Marielle Heller directs a very powerful story about a writer struggles to survive in the savage this savage world where art meets lies. Melissa McCarthy finally showed me that she can perform besides comedy, without using physicality to prove she can be talented. Richard E. Grant is the perfect sidekick and supporting role. Both have a well deserved Oscar nomination.