Florence Foster Jenkins

The film Florence Foster Jenkins begins with Aida Garifullina, portraying war-era opera star Lily Pons, singing The Bell Song from the opera Lakme’ in Carnegie Hall. Pons’ (Garifullina’s) voice is beautiful, so pure that it’s hard not to cry hearing it. The voice of Florence Foster Jenkins, who is in the audience, is not pure, and sharing it, which she often does, produces a different reaction – laughter usually, and often distress. Thus, director Stephen Frears’ opening scene sets the stage for a well-crafted story about the dualities of life – the purity we humans can possess and demonstrate juxtaposed against our abundant frailties and failures. The fact that Florence Foster Jenkins actually existed makes the telling of it just that much more enjoyable. 

Those unfamiliar with this stranger-than-fiction story will find it hard to fathom.  Florence Foster Jenkins, marvelously portrayed by Meryl Streep, has had a love for music since a young age. A talented pianist as a child, her desire for a career in music was derailed by the will of her father and, finally, a hand injury. We encounter Florence later in life; a significant inheritance has allowed her to pursue her love of music and lifelong passion for public performance through involvement and financial sponsorship of the wealthy New York City art society and social clubs. Along with her husband (sort of) and manager, St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), a failed British Shakespearean actor, Jenkins performs in her own well-attended social club. After a club performance of a tableaux vivant, she reveals to Bayfield her desire to continue voice lessons and expand her singing career. There’s just that one problem – she has no voice… she can’t sing, not a lick. 

It would be easy from here to treat Florence Foster Jenkins as farce – I mean it is, on the surface, just that. But Frears strikes the better balance between joke and poignancy. Florence’s ear-spitting warbles are mingled and matched with the beauty of other sounds and voices. Although whimsy abounds, we are never left too long without a reminder of the charade that is going on. Jenkins is coddled due to her great wealth and allowed her indulgence to perform – even reaching Carnegie Hall – in part, by those who live and thrive from her support. But, as with most lives, there’s context surrounding the foolishness and Frears takes time to reveal pain along side the pomp,  and empathy and selflessness against selfishness. Frears and the script writers walk the thin line masterfully bracketed by the perfectly-pitched performance of Streep and Grant, and a clever take by Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory) as Florence’s opportunistic but confused pianist. 

Some may decide that the balance is too one sided in Florence Foster Jenkins - that the film is too soft on its subject. But heck, we’re all fools at some time… in some way. We hope that our remaining substance is still noticeable during those times and that we are lucky enough, like Florence, to have plenty of love to cushion us in our follies. And a little tenderness never hurt anyone. Go see the show, I think you’ll like it - 8 out of 10.