Movie Review: 'Florence Foster Jenkins'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The title character may be tone-deaf, but the movie she's in sure isn't.
Florence Foster Jenkins hits just about every note just right.
Meryl Streep stars in this biographical dramedy set in 1944 about a woman sometimes described as the worst opera singer in the world.
Surely that wasn't literally the case, and her passion for music was unmistakable, but she might well have been the most self-deluded performer in the world when you consider the difference between what she thought she was talent-wise and what she actually was.
Ms. Jenkins was a New York heiress and socialite, a wealthy benefactor of the musical community in the 1930s and 1940s, who also dreamed of becoming an opera singer despite having what honest listeners – that is, those with no vested interest in the consequences of truth-telling -- would have described as a terrible singing voice.
But Jenkins' unvaryingly doting and supportive common-law husband, St. Clair "Whitey" Bayfield, a failed British actor played by Hugh Grant, makes sure nothing occurs in the way of ridicule that might burst Florence's bubble.
That might not be as easy to do as it was when the amateur opera singer was performing in her home for friends, who encouraged her and enjoyed her singing because they knew they were "supposed" to.
And that's because she has announced that she wants to sing in a charity concert at Carnegie Hall.
Uh oh: there will be reviews in the papers.
As the film unfolds, we come to know the backstory that helps to explain -- without ever making it simplistic – why this singing "career" is so important to her.
"They may say I couldn't sing," she says at one point, "but they can never say I didn't sing."
There's something about watching and listening to a bad singer sing – for a brief period of time, anyway – that is irresistibly funny, and veteran British director Stephen Frears (Philomena, The Queen, High Fidelity, The Van, Hero, The Grifters, Dangerous Liaisons, My Beautiful Laundrette) knows it as he and his film walk the fine line between comedy and tragedy.
The optimistic and uplifting script by debuting screenwriter Nichola Martin does entertaining justice to the material, which formed the basis for a recent fictionalized French version of essentially the same narrative, transposed to 1920s France in Marguerite, starring Catherine Frot.
Three-time Oscar winner and nineteen-time nominee Streep is magnificent – shocker, huh? – in yet another "vocal" performance (alongside Into the Woods, Ricki and the Flash, and Mamma Mia!) that dares us to laugh at her while we're laughing with her, and acknowledging her naivete, her world-weariness, and her obvious delusions of grandeur.
As for her singing, it reminds us that to sing this badly, the singer has to be able to sing well. And Streep certainly can.
Meanwhile, both Grant and Helberg match her in support, the former turning in what might be a career best in a subtly layered, warts-and-all performance, the latter (best known for his funny work on television's The Big Bang Theory) marvelous as her accompanist and an aspiring composer who, when she sings, must look on in hilariously bemused horror.
By the time it wraps, the film proves to be as much a poignant portrait of the devoted, unconventional relationship between Whitey and Florence as it is a musical biopic about talent or the lack thereof.
So we'll belt out 3 stars out of 4. Florence Foster Jenkins is, if not quite the trill of a lifetime, at least a charming and hysterical heartwarmer that, if you cannot decide whether to laugh, cry, or cheer, invites you to do all three.
