Florence Foster
Jenkins
(UK, 110
min.)
Dir. Stephen Frears, Writ. Nicholas Martin
Starring: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant,
Simon Helberg
 |
| Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins. Photo courtesy of eOne Films |
Meryl Streep’s career as a performer began with opera. One
wouldn’t know it from the caterwauling she does in Florence Foster Jenkins, but the hilariously heartfelt screeching
as the notoriously bad singer highlights how Meryl Streep is simply marvelous in this role. As chronicled
in Michael Schulman’s wonderful book Her
Again: Becoming Meryl Streep, the twelve-year-old Streep underwent lessons
with soprano and vocal coach Estelle Liebling, just around the corner from
Carnegie Hall where Florence Foster
Jenkins enjoys a riotous climax. She learned how to breathe properly and
stretch the full register of her vocal chords, while Liebling emphasised the
meaning of the text to her students and the importance of covering the full
range of the vocal register. It didn’t last, though, for four years later,
Meryl recognised her limitations and quit.
While their vocal abilities set them apart, Meryl Streep and
Florence Foster Jenkins share the same passion for the stage, which is
something that Schulman conveys lovingly in the same passage that describes
Streep’s realisation that opera wasn’t for her. Performing, on the other hand,
was, is, and always will be her artistic calling, and it’s remarkable to see
how some early seeds of her education inform her excellent performance as
Florence Foster Jenkins.
It’s one thing to sing well, but it’s another feat to mask
one’s abilities and perform badly—but act badly in a way that endears oneself
to the audience. Florence Foster Jenkins simply can’t carry a tune, yet from
the first moment she opens her mouth, she’s bound to become the most beloved
singer at the movies this year. The film chronicles the final days of Ms.
Foster Jenkins as she and her manager St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), with
whom she has a bizarre common-law/ sugar-momma-ish relationship, prepare her to
make the leap from tableau performer to star singer.
Jenkins runs New York’s posh Verdi Club where she and
Bayfield perform for the guests and inject musical life into the city. They’re
both creative types whose unequal ambitions and talents left them more than
twenty feet from stardom and a few steps closer to the trap door. They perform
kitschy, if lavish, numbers in which he performs monologues and then
she—silently—poses with the overtures of an orchestra. When Florence decides
that it’s finally time to show off her pipes and leave her mark on New York
society, she hires an upstart pianist named Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg) for a
lucrative training session.
Imagine Mr. McMoon’s surprise when Florence opens her mouth
and screeches like a cat in heat. Her voice is among the most awful sounds that
one can endure. The first singing lesson of Florence
Foster Jenkins, however, marks one of those rare film experiences where
everyone in the theatre erupts into a sustained chorus of fat-burning laughter.
Streep plays the scene marvellously as she inhabits Florence’s delusion that
she is the grand dame of opera. Her utter oblivion to her wailing is hilarious.
Florence Foster
Jenkins once again reveals the extraordinary musicality to a great Meryl
Streep performance. Using the techniques of timing and breathing underneath a
fat suit and some impressive costumes by Consolata Boyle, Streep wheezes and
gasps not like a trained opera star, but like an actor. It wouldn’t make sense
for Florence to have the technique down pat, so Streep deftly shifts everything
over a beat. Florence can’t hit her mark and it’s very, very funny as Streep
imbues the physical effort of her character into a farcical offense against
good form and talent. This kind of wonderful physical exertion is the stuff of
classic screwball comedy.
One must say the same for Streep’s co-stars. As much as Florence Foster Jenkins deserves to be
praised for yet another spectacular and fearless Streep performance, both the
supporting cast often matches her comedic beat. Helberg is the reaction shot
king as Mr. McMoon, who has the unfortunate assignment of carrying every tune with
reassuring dignity whilst Florence screeches. The film cuts to Helberg every
other time that Florence hits a false note, which is often, and his
cringe-worthy suppressions of laughs and guffaws makes the awful music
endlessly enjoyable. Ditto a feisty and scene-stealing performance by Nina
Arianda (Midnight in Paris) as a
floozy trophy wife who pulls through in the end.
Grant, meanwhile, has never been better than he is here as
the chivalrously slimy St. Clair. He
wears a resigned appreciation with every encouraging nod he gives while
listening to every flat note Florence hits. He makes the cad difficult to love
as Florence supports him while he keeps an apartment on her dime, but with
another woman (Rebecca Ferguson, who notably refuses to play the role of the sidebar
girlfriend) on the sly. They have a strange relationship, but St. Clair’s
devotion to Florence’s passion, despite every piece of evidence saying he
should do the opposite, makes Florence
Foster Jenkins a sweetly endearing love story of compassion and unselfish
love.
Under the seamless direction of Stephen Frears (Philomena, The Queen), Florence Foster
Jenkins satirizes its subject while honouring her spirit and courage. The
film shows how Florence’s ability to live her passion was a unique privilege.
Not everyone can buy her way to stardom, and few singers can afford to
four-wall Carnegie Hall, but she did sing at the Holy Grail of live venues in
America, which is a claim that few can make. There is something undeniably
vulgar about Florence’s blind ambition and her ability to get whatever she
wants thanks to her fortune. Altercations between St. Clair and a ruffled arts
critic (Christian McKay) highlight this element very well as Florence takes the
stage away from an ingénue who could get there on merit. Similarly, the film
lets one sympathise with Florence as one sees her surrounded by enablers as men
allow her to face awful embarrassment because she buys their favour. The
supporting characters exploit her innocent passion just as much as they enable
her gluttony.
Underneath every gut-bursting assault of her vocal chords,
Streep conveys Florence’s unburning passion. Florence might not be a good
singer, but she’s a born performer. Her courage to face the stage offers an
inspiring story of a woman who owned her passion without giving a damn. Seeing
Florence belly flop while St. Clair fears that dangerous step it takes to
become a leading man, one watches the actors share a lesson in taking risks
without fear of failure.
The film ends with Streep singing a beautifully melodic aria
as Frears lets the audience hear how Florence sounds in her own mind. Streep’s
real voice, and Florence’s inner one, is music to the ears as the film ends on
a finely tuned note of a life at peace and dreams achieved.
As Streep takes a much different path from her character,
she displays a similar fearlessness. She long passed the point in her career
where she had nothing left to prove, and one sees in Streep the same unadulterated
passion for performing that sparkles in Florence’s eyes. One only gets to such
a career peak by taking risks without fearing the consequences. Just as
Florence Foster Jenkins lived her dreams, Streep’s award-calibre performance is
the true point of inspiration here as it shows that at least one woman can
break barriers and headline the kind of smart and entertaining films that few
studios produce any more. Like Florence, Streep enjoys a privileged space in
her life and career, but she’s worked hard for it and getting to this point in
her career wasn’t easy. If only Florence Foster Jenkins, like Streep, had recognised
her limitations as an opera singer, they might be equals rather than peculiar
kindred spirits. Florence Foster Jenkins can’t hit a high note to save her
life, but Florence Foster Jenkins is
yet another peak for Meryl Streep.
Florence Foster
Jenkins opens in theatres Friday, July 12.
It screens in Ottawa
at The ByTowne and in Toronto at The Varsity.
