by Peter Callaghan

Society hostess empties coffers

To play Carnegie in spite of scoffers

A syphilitic broad dubbed “the worst singer in the world” by the New York Post who is patron of the Brooklyn Orchestra for Distressed Gentlewomen, owner of a collection of “not for practical use” chairs on which people of note have expired, considers hard work to be an hour of study a day, “sometimes two” and who would rather go without bread than Mozart – is my kind of gal.

No, we’re not talking about the late, great Elaine “I’m Just A Broadway Baby” Stritch nor the later and greater Mae “I Used To Be Snow White But I Drifted” West, but the even later and even more ear-grating social hostess-cum-melody murderer Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep in sparkling form) who despite having a vocal delivery which at best can be described as spirited and at worst flatter than a witch’s tit, sold out Carnegie Hall faster than Sinatra for her legendary concert on 25 October 1944. As Ol’ Blue Eyes used to croon: It Was A Very Good Year!

Unfortunately for Florence, or as her second husband St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant in excellent form as a hammy British actor on the slide) used to call her Bunny, it was also the year of her death. For a month and one day after her sell-out concert at the esteemed Carnegie Hall – which Newsweek magazine described as: “Where stifled chuckles and occasional outbursts had once sufficed at the Ritz, unabashed roars were the order of the evening” – The Diva of Din passed away. In real life, of a heart attack brought on by the advanced stages of syphilis in the luxurious Hotel Seymour in New York City. In the film, ditto; but with the added contributory factor of reading a stinging review in the New York Post.

Director Stephen Frears (Philomena, The Queen) and experienced British television screenwriter Nicholas Martin (for whom this is his debut feature) play it for laughs from the off. And Meryl Streep’s first rehearsal with the effete pianist Cosmé McMoon (Simon Helberg as a camp Emo Philips) and money-for-old-rope vocal coach Carlo Edwards (David Haig) is the highlight of the entire film and sure to get you rolling and lol-ing in the aisles. Streep doesn’t so much miss the notes, more thunders towards them, digs in her hooves, kicks up a cloud of dust and charges off in the opposite direction. Or as the author Stephen Pile more delicately put it: “No one before or since has succeeded in liberating themselves quite so completely from the shackles of musical notation.”

But it’s not all about “mockers and scoffers”, as her supportive but far from faithful husband says. For underneath Florence’s Hyacinth Bouquet façade lies a steeliness to survive the horrors of syphilis which she contracted on her wedding night at the tender age of eighteen from her “bit of an alley cat” first husband; a well of loneliness deepened by the fact that her second husband plays away, her so-called “friends” are only with her for the money, and due to her illness sex and children are buried in the past; and perhaps most poignant of all, a misplaced belief in her own ability which is underscored in two moving zoom-outs – firstly, as she one-handedly plays Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor in McMoon’s damp-ridden apartment; and secondly, when she digs out a copy of the New York Post from a trash can and reads the stinging “worst singer in the world” review by music critic Earl Wilson (Christian McKay).

Although the film is a hoot from start to finish and, as ever, Meryl Streep is nothing short of brilliant, the screenplay by Nicholas Martin lacks a bit of heart in that it doesn’t quite go deep enough under the skin of the characters for my liking. Whether that’s to do with direction, performances, a conscious choice or nit-picking on my part, who knows. But in the end it doesn’t matter because it is a solitary bum note in a symphony of joy. Hugh Grant gives his best performance in over a decade. The conveyor belt of British character actors rise to the rare occasion of being offered a role in a feature. And, above all, the spirit of Florence Foster Jenkins shines through. “People may say I couldn’t sing,” she says after her farewell concert at Carnegie Hall, “but no one can say I didn’t sing.”

[imdb is=tt4136084]

Peter Callaghan
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