What it's like: Amusing and poignant.
Plot: A wealthy New York socialite aspires to sing in public. Unfortunately, she can’t sing, but no-one can quite bring themselves to tell her, for various reasons. Actors: Meryl Streep plays Florence, and Hugh Grant her husband and manager.
Comment: Really well produced, with a heart-warming atmosphere and excellent period reconstruction of the 1940s. Great performances from Streep and Grant, and support roles from Rebecca Ferguson and Simon Helberg.
The story is told partly from the viewpoint of a newly employed piano player (St Clair Bayfield) for Florence, who (like the audience) is unclear why everyone is pretending Florence is a good singer and gradually finds out why. She is clearly a warm, kind, generous soul and patron of the arts but as the film proceeds we see there are other reasons people allow her to continue to sing. However, it all starts to get very tricky when she want to perform public concerts. Then the whole business starts to become much more difficult to manage.
Mark Kermode, the BBC film critic, neatly described the film as ‘hilarious and poignant’. It is both comedic and very moving. It’s difficult to think of another film character who elicits both amusement and compassion as much as Florence does.
Did you know ? It is a true story. Florence Foster Jenkins really existed and was very much as depicted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins
Rating: a profoundly heart-warming 4.5 out of 5.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins_(film) Background: Florence Foster Jenkins and her style of singing Musicologists and professional musicians were and are quite fascinated by Florence’s singing – what exactly wasn’t working and why (which is probably a v useful thing for singing teachers to understand).
Noel Coward used to attend all her concerts and her records (which were v popular, as examples of singing out of tune) are even studied at musical academies.
The thing is, she actually had a v good understanding of music – she could read it and appreciate it.
The distinctive feature of her singing is that she is in line with the melody but she just misses the correct notes.
The most likely explanation is that she fully understood the music and when she sang, she heard it as it should be, but in fact it was not quite right.
So, it’s all quite sad and frustrating. But as the film shows, there were reasons why people didn’t tell her and why she didn’t reach her musical potential.
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