Founding a Verdi club helped her grow an audience, as did the work of her manager and longtime partner, the actor St. Clair Bayfield (played by Hugh Grant in the film).
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The film is both hilarious and touching, and ultimately endearing.
The film is the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, (Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep), American socialite, philanthropist and amateur operatic soprano who was known and ridiculed for her lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, aberrant pronunciation and her generally abominable singing ability. Grant is unshakable and charming in his wife’s defense but shows chinks in his armor when she insists on playing Carnegie Hall, perhaps a ruse too far.
Bayfield spits with anger about the “mockers and scoffers” who show up to Florence’s concerts and the servicemen who request her record on the radio, enjoying a good laugh during their leave.
The Big Bang Theory Season 10 star Simon Helberg is all over the news nowadays. She is 76, and despite her failing health (the syphilis she contracted decades earlier is taking its toll), she has taken it upon herself to book Carnegie Hall for a free concert aimed at celebrating returning servicemen.
“Florence Foster Jenkins”, a Paramount Pictures, Pathe and BBC Films release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “brief suggestive material”.
Modeled after Peter Sellers’ performance in “Being There”, Helberg’s expressive reactions to Streep’s wailing are some of the funniest moments in “Florence Foster Jenkins”. I truly can’t remember that last time I enjoyed laughing at a film until tears were running down my cheeks.
“Florence Foster Jenkins”, wisely, makes us wait a bit for the money shot – or, rather, the money note. So we asked her what she is dying to do onstage.
Explaining how he “likes” the fact his “Florence Foster Jenkins” character has a mistress, he added: “I always admire the French and the Italians who are very devoted to their marriages”. “I had to know them well to dismantle them, to shatter them into a million pieces when Meryl started singing”. Who knows? Who knows what she heard. Helberg takes on the role of pianist Cosme McMoon. “And I think it’s amusing and it’s tragic and it’s comforting but only when it’s done passionately, only when somebody is putting themselves out there genuinely and ironically, and you know, aiming for the fences and kind of falling flat, no pun intended”.
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What Works: Director Stephen Frears (“The Queen”) finds the right mix of comedy and drama to present an authentic portrait of this unconventional woman and the two guiding men in her life. “I’ve found that the really good ones are very trusting”, he went on. “The most challenging thing was definitely the dancing, doing the Lindy Hop”, Arianda said.
