Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) loves music and opera. She has a vocal coach, the assistant director of the Metropolitan Opera, and hires a pianist, Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg), because she longs to sing. Unfortunately, mostly for the people who hear her, she can’t sing. Thankfully, her husband St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) is supportive … masking how bad her singing really is.
One of the questions raised is this: does what brings you joy need to be accepted by others? Does it matter if Jenkins can sing, or just that she wants to share joy by singing? Streep is in her element – and loving it, it would seem. Grant plays ‘put on’ rather well, and the rest of the cast fleshes out Jenkins’ life well.
Special features for the film take us behind the way that Jenkins sounds (and some of the music the real-life heiress helped right). There’s also a Q&A with Streep, an exploration of how the story behind the script which became the movie, and designing the look of the World War II era. Overall, it’s an entertaining lark, and fans will enjoy diving into the backstory of Jenkins and why her story matters.
