Her elderly contemporaries love her and Florence loves to sing and has no trouble attracting audiences. Miss Florence can't sing well at all, but no one has the heart, gumption, or financial near-sightedness to tell her. Set in 1944 New York, the film documents the final year of Jenkins' life, as she finds a dependable pianist/composer in the ever-nervous Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg of "The Big Bang Theory"), makes a personal recording that becomes a unlikely radio hit, and even gets to perform to an enthused sell-out audience at Carnegie Hall.įlorence unfolds with its one joke being repeated again and again. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), an English gentleman who claims the couple has an understanding regarding his living and sleeping in an apartment with a much younger woman (Rebecca Ferguson, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation). Among those turning a blind eye are Florence's husband St. Oscar nomination record-holder Meryl Streep plays the title character, a socialite who is highly regarded in certain circles, including a club she personally founded, despite her woefully off-key soprano singing. Instead supporting her endeavors, often to some personal gain. Being born into the latter enabled her to surround herself with people who politely chose not to acknowledge her limitations, In the early part of her career, delving this deep into character was almost like a form of self-flagellation for Streep here, it’s more like joyful self-expression.Florence Foster Jenkins tells the true story of an operatic singer who lacked vocal talent but had an abundance of money. Jenkins with all the back story you need to understand her eccentricities, providing the film emotional heft and lifting it above its single joke premise. In just a few choice line readings, she is able to imbue Mrs. Streep’s singing is hilarious with flights that are almost right and then suddenly Hindenburg-like. The film, though, belongs to the iron lady. Helberg, who plays his own piano, shows a similar sensitivity in support of Streep. Jenkins tone-deaf flights of fancy is the stuff of legend. In accompanist circles, McMoon’s ability to change pace and even key to match Mrs. Jenkins’ beleaguered accompanist with the Hogwarts-approved name of Cosmé McMoon, played by Big Bang Theory‘s Simon Helberg. It’s Grant’s most satisfying and emotionally rich performance since he first made stammering a thing boys should do with Four Weddings and a Funeral.įlorence Foster Jenkins is a three-hander with the third coming in the form of Mrs. Foster’s largesse but whose devotion to her is oceans deep. Hugh Grant uses every bit of his comic dexterity to play Bayfield, a gentleman of the theater whose lifestyle is fueled by Mrs. Jenkins was a long-term syphilis survivor, a condition that was treated at the time with mercury and arsenic, treatments that likely left her at least partially deaf. While they were married, their relationship is presented as platonic out of both design and necessity: Mrs. Clair Bayfield, a British actor known for the flourish he brought to supporting roles in Shakespeare plays. The job of maintaining the bubble of sycophancy that allowed the Florence Foster Jenkins train to keep rolling fell to St. Her eccentric manner and artistic exuberance has already been saluted on Broadway in the form of 2005’s Souvenir, a two-person play for which Judy Kaye received a Tony nomination for the lead role. In the 1960s, it became en vogue to play the lone vanity recording of her warbling trills at dinner parties for a good laugh. Jenkins’ recitals was a hot commodity, though entrée was strictly limited to her high society well-wishers and the paid-off press. Just as today we are quick to share the latest Rebecca Black monstrosity on social networks, a ticket to one of Mrs. Whether she was aware of this fact and of the snickering that accompanied her performances is still a matter of historical debate. Famously, she possessed a voice that had the tonal quality of bus brakes. Set in 1940s New York City, the film is inspired by the real life title character, a kind and somewhat batty socialite who, in addition to supporting the cultural life of the city, insisted on taking on opera’s most challenging arias. It is just that, while these days all you need is three bars of Wi-Fi to keep up the charade, back then it required something more: a healthy inheritance and a goodly number of yes men on the payroll. As shown in Florence Foster Jenkins, a comic lark that packs a satisfying emotional wallop and continues the balls-to-the-wall career victory lap Meryl Streep has been on since turning 60 years old seven years ago, deluded self-promotion was not born with the advent of Instagram.
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