fishing around for praise from anyone in her circle willing to give it), pitiful (i.e. 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. 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.įrears’ 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.
Streep has a wonderfully poignant camaraderie with Grant, who underplays beautifully against his spouse’s more-than-occasional showiness. 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.įlorence 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. Streep’s Florence bursts her own illusions just as often as she casts them. 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. 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. 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, 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. 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.
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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 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. 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. This article was initially published at The Film Experience.
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