Still in the early scenes of Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) my Arts Editor gasped, “Ack! I have a stitch in my side,” before she resumed gasping with laughter, cringing and covering her ears.
This shows the successful machination of the classic plot device: contrast. The story of a real woman who yearned to sing opera through the 1930s and ’40s, Florence (Meryl Streep) has money, a devoted husband, a distinguished voice teacher, contacts with powerful musical personalities, and now needs an accompanist in order to sing what she needs to sing. A suitably eccentric and timid young man is recruited, and it is only now we discover the fly in the ointment, around which all seems to revolve.
The woman has no talent and no skill, and worse yet, she doesn’t realize it.
And so, for a time, we hoot with laughter at someone who thinks she’s more than she is, much like the buxom blonde who literally must crawl out of the music hall, laughing so hard at Florence’s unconscious ineptitude that she cannot stand: a low-class foil for Florence and her up-scale associates. But, as with many good plots, not all is as it seems. A story that merely jeers at this would-be coloratura soprano would be uninteresting and unworthy of our notice.
Instead, darker facts emerge: Florence’s hidden, deadly illness, which she has endured for fifty years and which endangers her life with each performance; a vocal coach who, perhaps, encourages her too much; a husband who has not the courage to tell her she’s not really suited to do what she wishes. Each performance, planned or impromptu, as awful as it may be, now gains a serious facet. Florence morphs from a comic figure to an Everyman, someone carrying woes & dreams, demons and angels, for whom the everyday burden of just living must, from time to time, be transcended by a dream. She is, as it were, a member of the audience, to be hugged and held, adored and comforted, and all that returned; sharing that commonality of ours, before returning to her dream, the stage, and the music which wreathes her spirit.
Now we come to her apex performance: playing the legendary Carnegie Hall. Her stage fright, even with its comic facet, excites our sympathy as well as our humor. Her shrill and off-key opening number plays to a truly raucous crowd, and trembles to a halt as the audience jeers. And then a figure, buxom and blonde, shows her true colors, leading the audience in a resounding encouragement of our heroine’s performance. But there’s a fly in the ointment…
I’m reminded of an oft-repeated aphorism, that it’s the journey, not the destination, which matters (mention this not to the poor airline traveler!); here, the essence is not the achievement, but the striving; not the glory of grand recognition, but the love of the music which is truly important. In this light, the machinations of the husband, the carefully chosen words of the vocal coach, are not ill-considered deceit to be regretted or condemned, but the tools of men attempting to compound the love of a woman for something they, too, love – art.
Meryl Streep is, as usual, spot-on, revealing a woman who wants to sing, who’ll give it her all – but in the midst of some broken-backed attempt conveys her inner bewilderment at the difficulty of the musical paths she must tread. Hugh Grant plays her husband, Sinclair, and he’s up to the task – a man daft in his love, willing to cater to her every delusion in order to ignore the metaphorical ugliness inflicted on her. Her accompanist, Cosmé McMoon, is more than capably performed by Simon Helberg, a man, eccentric already, who may be overwhelmed by greater eccentricities.
This is a movie with a pacing from another era. We’re given plenty of time to consider the undercurrents and questions, and if the dialog is not as clever as in some movies, in a movie about music, this may be appropriate.
Strongly recommended.
(This review written with many contributions from my Arts Editor.)
