Review: Florence Foster Jenkins
Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes, but ignorance can also be a willful delusion. Certainly no one ever made a case for both interpretations more than Florence Foster Jenkins, whose ability to have her passion and determination override her undisputed lack of vocal ability has been dramatized several times both for the stage - the Tony-nominated play Souvenir and the West End musical Glorious! - and the screen, last year's French film Marguerite and this year's Florence Foster Jenkins, the latter starring one of cinema's greatest actresses essaying the title role of one of the world's worst singers.
By any accounting, Florence's life was such that to call it "tragicomic" would be a gross understatement. Born to a wealthy Pennsylvania family, she was a talent pianist, even performing a recital at the White House for then-President Rutherford B. Hayes. Her father cut her off when she refused to give up her music, though he eventually relented and allowed her back in his financial good graces. She married at 18, an unlucky union to one Frank Jenkins, who decided to gift her with his syphilis on their wedding night. The deteriorating effects of the disease, coupled with decades and decades of taking arsenic and mercury (the only known remedies at the time), would compromise her health. An arm injury dashed any hopes of becoming a concert pianist. Director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Nicholas Martin dole out these details throughout the film, and the details become piercing reminders of what a survivor Florence is and how essential the illusion was to her reality.
"Our is a happy world," St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) tells young pianist Cosmé McMoon (Simon Helberg), whom he's hired to serve as Florence's accompanist. It is indeed a happy world, but a diligently maintained one. St. Clair is Florence's long-term partner, manager and caretaker, a Shakespearean stage actor who realised his shortcomings early on and who is more than content to cede the spotlight to and lavish his attention on Florence with whom he stages lavish tableaux vivants for her own social organization The Verdi Club. (The club, mostly comprised of fans and friends, also attracted the likes of Enrico Caruso and Cole Porter.) "Music has been and is my life," Florence declares to the members of the club, who honour her kindness and generosity with their affectionate applause.
And why shouldn't they? At this point, Florence has yet to sing. Frears withholds the moment for nearly half an hour, but when the moment arrives, it is glorious. Cosmé is shellshocked at her caterwauling, even more perplexed that neither St. Clair nor Carlo Edwards (David Haig), a prominent conductor from the Metropolitan Opera hired to be her vocal coach, are doubled over in laughter. Carlo knows better than to endanger his earnings, and his remarks are triumphant in their ambivalence: "You've never sounded better," "One word: authenticity," and, when she wonders if she's prepared to give a recital, "You'll never be more ready." Helberg, it should be noted, truly anchors this scene - his facial expressions worthy of a silent screen comedian.
One of the many wonderful things about Florence Foster Jenkins is that instead of taking pity in her folly, the filmmakers and Streep divine inspiration from it. It would be all too easy to laugh at someone who is so unbelievably oblivious to her profound vocal ineptitude. (There are those who argue that Florence was very much in on the joke, but the filmmakers give that hardly any traction.) Not everyone can achieve, not everyone can be the best. Yet should one stop trying? Should one stop believing? And yet is it not also dangerous to foster and encourage such dedication to something that will never be achieved? Everyone involved somehow manages the nearly impossible task of making one cringe at the situations, both comic and tragic, but never once at Florence.
It's difficult not to remain on Florence's side given the ebullience of Streep's performance. If Streep was too mechanical in her technique in her younger years, she has become relaxed in her so-called dotage - few actors convey such joy in performing. Her unabashed delight is palpable as she meticulously mimics Florence's strangulations and gesticulations, and her empathy prevents Florence from becoming a ridiculous fool.
The genuine revelation is Grant, who is simply superb and who, to use a phrase from the screenplay, "shares a profound communion" with Streep. Florence and St. Clair had an unorthodox union - he lived with the much-younger Kathleen (Rebecca Ferguson, underused but still making a strong impression during their time together - but their love and affection was undeniable. There's a lovely little scene at the opera where Florence is greatly moved by the soprano's singing and St. Clair basks in her happiness. It's almost a throwaway, that scene, yet it packs as much of a wallop as another wordless exchange between the two as Florence falters on-stage and St. Clair wills her to go on with every fibre of his being. Their love story is the heart and soul of this flawed, beautiful, and heartbreaking film.
Florence Foster Jenkins
Directed by: Stephen Frears
Written by: Nicholas Martin
Starring: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson, David Haig, Stanley Townsend, Nina Arianda, Christian McKay, John Sessions, John Kavanagh, Brid Brennan
