Aubrey MaloneFlorence Foster Jenkins (PG)
Is there anything Meryl Streep can’t do? I’m sure if they asked her to play a one-legged hyena with seven eyes she’d have a bash at it. Here she plays the title character, a socialite/heiress who dresses like the Queen of Sheba and sings like a rusty hinge.
The film is based on fact. Ms Jenkins died in 1944. Her crimes against the public’s auditory system were allowed to go unpunished for years, largely due to the fact that her husband, St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), protected her from bad reviews of her concerts, either by bribing reviewers to be falsely flattering to her or hiding the more corrosive critiques of her spectacularly out-of-tune voice.
As the film begins, Florence is contemplating a final concert in Carnegie Hall. To prepare for it she employs a struggling pianist, Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg). It doesn’t take long for it to dawn on Cosme as she does her demented hiccupy delivery that she doesn’t know a crochet from a hatchet.
Excuses
Will he make his excuses and leave or stand by her as Bayfield has done and thereby protect a lonely lady from the ire of the masses?
Streep is excellent as the hapless chanteuse who frequently reduced her listeners to howls of laughter but still managed to preserve a semblance of dignity. Grant also turns in a career-best performance, managing to convince us that he still loves her dearly despite the fact that he carries on a lengthy affair with another woman.
This is an immensely enjoyable film which oozes good humour.
Stephen Frears directs with charm and empathy, combining moments of hilarity with poignance as the syphilitic diva prepares for her swansong without the slightest suspicion that the outer world might not adore her as much as her tightly-knit coterie of friends, many of whom are beneficiaries of her largesse, like Arturo Toscanini (John Kavanagh in an amusing cameo).
Worst writer
One is tempted to compare Jenkins to the Co. Down writer Amanda McKittrick Ros, a woman who had a huge belief in her ability despite being generally regarded as one of the worst writers of all time. But perhaps a more apt parallel would be to the Norma Desmond of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard.
In that film William Holden – playing the equivalent of the Grant character – tells us it’s dangerous to wake a sleepwalker. When such a scenario unfolds here, the silver cord of secrecy is broken and a woman who’s cheated death for decades is exposed to the harsh glare of the media for the first time, leading to the dying fall of the film’s finale.
I expected Streep to be great in it but Grant – all rolling eyes and amiable smiles – was a revelation to me. For an erstwhile stuffy period drama actor to be able to go toe to toe with the world’s greatest actress in every scene is probably the greatest praise one can give him.
Excellent *****