Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

#51 — Florence Foster Jenkins, a socialite and opera singer of abysmal ability.

This article was initially published at The Film Experience.

Matthew: Florence Foster Jenkins was an affluent New York heiress who is only remembered today for her decades-long career as a nonprofessional soprano that spurred many to label her “the world’s worst opera singer.” Meryl Streep is one of the most acclaimed and rewarded actresses in history, a global celebrity whose foremost attribute is talent, pure and simple. The marquee casting of Streep as Jenkins is the amusing and unignorable irony at the center of Stephen Frears’ Florence Foster Jenkins, a biographical drama that narrativizes the amateur, septuagenarian chanteuse’s notorious attempts to resuscitate her dormant career in the years before her death in 1944. It is nothing if not a testament to Streep’s power as one of the only active, major female movie stars of a certain age that a period piece about an awful opera singer well into her 70s received a prime summer release from a major studio (Paramount) and a full-steam awards campaign that garnered the actress her 20th Oscar nomination.

The paradox of asking a legend of monumental talent to play a woman who had none whatsoever surely made for a cheeky talking point at distribution time, but the role of Florence Foster Jenkins serves as an interesting challenge to Streep in other, more meaningful ways. The actress, always so blazingly aware on screen, has seldom been invited to play oblivious women, save for the villainized divas of outright, satirically-minded comedies like She-Devil and Death Becomes Her. Streep is certainly at peak ham as Florence: each of her costumes is an eye-popping sight gag, her every goosey and effortful gesture is a delight, and her singing is oddly magnetic in all its bum, loopy notes and painfully futile exertions. The actress creates an inspired comedic presence for Florence’s performances; her singing amuses, but what truly kills is the way in which Florence seems to zone out mid-song, her voice struggling on while her eyes glaze over and go to a place of blank befuddlement.

That being said, Streep is far too brilliant and empathetic an actress to play Florence as a complete fool, no matter the character’s self-deception about her tone-deaf talents; she complicates our view of the character, who is by turns tragic and triumphant, accordingly. Streep’s Florence bursts her own illusions just as often as she casts them. Florence sees and grasps more than she immediately lets on, and part of the actress’ characterization is a gradual reveal of this awareness, from Florence’s knowing intimations regarding the side life of her English husband St. Clair (a never-better Hugh Grant), who carries on with a live-in mistress in a downtown apartment that Florence pays for, to her open-armed acceptance of death (Jenkins contracted syphilis from her first husband on their wedding night) so long as she can first achieves her dreams of musical stardom.

Neither Streep nor screenwriter Nicholas Martin sees Florence’s ambitions as being completely self-serving, although the actress makes the more compelling case on this front. So much of Streep’s performance springs from a place of true love — for her husband, for her entire and unmistakably privileged way of life, and, most of all, for music. There is an authentic genuineness in the way Streep appears to listen so deeply to those around her, but especially to the genius musicians she encounters, like the legendary French soprano Lily Pons, whose early performance in Carnegie Hall transfixes Florence to the point of tears, inspiring her to resume her singing career on that very same stage.

Florence Foster Jenkins also continues the tradition of Streep doing some of her most credible and affecting work from inside onscreen couples, whether it be with Kurt Russell in Silkwood, Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County, Stanley Tucci in Julie & Julia, Tommy Lee Jones in Hope Springs, or Grant in this film. Streep has a wonderfully poignant camaraderie with Grant, who underplays beautifully against his spouse’s more-than-occasional showiness. No matter the disparity of their approaches, each actor enlivens one of the more unorthodox marriages in Streep’s filmography, delineating a bond defined not by passion but abiding fondness, attentive devotion, and a fair share of implied understanding.

Frears’ film can verge on hagiography and ultimately settles on a dull and simplistic moral about treating society hostesses the same way you’d like to be treated, but Streep, for her part, staves off this mawkishness for as long as she can. She deftly navigates Florence’s capricious and at times childlike emotions of fear, envy, and adoration, more than willing to let the character look desperate (i.e. fishing around for praise from anyone in her circle willing to give it), pitiful (i.e. growing listless to the point of helplessness in St. Clair’s absence), or even callous (i.e. dispelling St. Clair’s acting ambitions with weary, tight-lipped disregard).

It’s through choices like these that Florence becomes a far more rounded creation than we might have initially expected. But for all of its diverting and humanizing merits, the performance never quite galvanizes me like Streep’s best work. Do you feel similarly? Why might that be?

John: Florence Foster Jenkins is first and foremost an inspired casting feat: a preternaturally gifted and acclaimed actress playing a woman whose bad singing has accrued its own legend. Its glossy production values and impressive box-office haul is further evidence of Streep’s singular stardom. I co-sign your praise of Streep’s ability to mine the exact amount of tragedy and comedy from Florence. Streep sells Florence’s passion and love for music and dogged determination to live her dreams without making her out to be the dimwitted, oblivious fool. When Florence sings — and, amazingly, it’s “terrible” but not exactly unlistenable — Streep telegraphs a deep and blissful peace, even when some raucous sailors hoot and holler or her suspension strings suddenly falter during a high-wire stunt. Florence understands that she will never coloratura like those gifted sopranos she weeps over at Carnegie Hall and has accepted this sad fact, pushing through it in a sense to instead enliven her fantasies with remarkable conviction. Streep never winks at her audience or condescends to her character, and in her refusal to play Florence as the frivolous, overindulged society dame, delivers a performance of unusual pathos.

While Streep does manage to imbue melancholic notes, the performance features her comic prowess both onstage and off. From the first moment she drops down into the film, clad in angel wings and a halo, her padded figure swaddled in white, Streep remains calm and buoyant amid the most ridiculous circumstances. Since syphilis has weakened her constitution, the slightest noises or surprises startle Florence, which means Streep’s excitable nerves often rattle like a tambourine. Florence’s odd quirks — her penchant for bathtubs full of potato salad, her habit of carrying a secretive briefcase at all times — actually work to deepen and dimensionalize the character, no matter their absurdities. When her vocal coach first guides her through an exercise, Streep produces the strangest, almost animalistic noises, but her Florence is unaware of these sounds; she just seems pleasantly surprised and overcome by her faculties. Streep’s off-key and imprecise vocals are an inspired well of zany comic gold, a series of delusions as delightful as they are extensive. Whether singing at home, in the recording booth, or onstage in front of hundreds, Streep’s turbulent pitch and indistinct phrasing are its own type of terrible achievement.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed Streep’s flamboyant yet nuanced Florence, Hugh Grant gives the most accomplished performance in the film as a doting husband whose love and devotion yield constant surprises and insights into an atypical marriage. As you’ve mentioned, this central relationship reminded me most of Streep and Tucci’s work in Julie & Julia, another film where Streep burrows into a broad, real-life character and delivers a precise star performance that nonetheless feels somewhat limited, for all its evident peaks. Streep’s work in Florence doesn’t cut as deep or exhibit the range of her most prodigious comedic outings, but in the words of the bawdy, Brooklynese-speaking socialite played by Nina Arianda in the same film, “Give the girl a break, she’s singing her heart out!”