It’s a very narrow field for a little white guy like myself…and I don’t know what I happened. More recently, the 1994 biopic Ed Wood focused on the famously inept filmmaker. Jenkins’ fabulous eccentricities are woven into the story – her collection of the chairs famous people were sitting in when they died, for example, her fear of sharp objects, her obsession with certain foods – but the overall picture is of a woman whose capacity for joy and energy for singing affected everyone around her, and to the good. An irrepressible NY heiress whose money enabled her amateur singing career, Jenkins butchered opera selections and art songs while achieving a level of camp popularity, all winningly recreated by star Meryl Streep and director Stephen Frears in the comedy-drama “Florence Foster Jenkins”.
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The film follows on the heels of several stage plays about Foster Jenkins in the last two decades, a documentary film and, most recently, a published biography.
Meryl Steeps astounding acting beautify hid the fact that she is a attractive vocal musician, and mimicked the real Madam Florence. But now her posthumous reputation is expanding in all directions.
Except it’s no caricature – it’s the truth.
And for her portrayal of Jenkins, Streep was game for all of the over-the-top costumes thrown her way, starting with the bodysuit.
The lowdown: A wealthy socialite with a bad voice believes she can sing opera. By the time penicillin was discovered, she was too far gone to benefit from it. I don’t recommend listening to it with headphones, by any stretch of the imagination. This role calls for the greater skill of delivering Florence’s songs as deliciously badly as Flo did. Jenkins is an atrocious singer whose high-pitched assaults on Verdi, Strauss, and Mozart’s “Der Hölle Rache” are suitable for the shower but not public exhibition.
The title character may be tone-deaf, but the movie she’s in sure isn’t. He does all the heavy showmanship lifting to keep Florence dreamy and happy, rather than sad and sickly; for St. Claire and even for Florence, the movie argues, her ignorance is their bliss. Florence Foster Jenkins will always be a mystery. Early on, he’s mortified by his patron’s woeful attempts at singing.
Like anyone who sets themselves up (consciously or sub-consciously) as a Naked Emperor, Foster Jenkins couldn’t have done it without the support of others. Her father, Charles Foster served a term in the state House of Representatives, from 1883-84, and was also a business person involved with railways and directed the Wyoming National Bank. Jenkins was a real life figure, a wealthy socialite with a love for music that led her to also fancy herself a performer. The supportive smile never leaves his face, but the look he gives McMoon says it all: We indulge this woman.
Less effective is Simon Helberg of TV’s “The Big Bang Theory” who plays Jenkins’ new accompanist, and mugs his way through the film. The only thing that seems to anchor Grant’s Bayfield to the floor is his firm belief that he’s doing the right thing.
With a clipped, clucking laugh that becomes even more pronounced when he’s nervous, which is often, Simon Helberg (Howard on “The Big Bang Theory“) is a light-hearted gem as a young man anxious about his professional reputation but who finds himself charmed by Florence as well. The critic is the villain in “Florence Foster Jenkins”, which sides with Jenkins and Bayfield in repelling the “mockers and.scoffers” and propping up the dreamers.
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A biographic sketch of a real-life American socialite, the film gives us a very specific moment in Jenkins’s (Streep) life when she made a decision to perform at Carnegie Hall for the troops in 1944.
