After I watched Marguerite, I immediately watched Florence Foster Jenkins, which stars Meryl Streep as the titular character, Hugh Grant as her “husband,” St Clair Bayfield and Simon Helberg as her accompanist, Cosme McMoon. Stephen Frears, who directed The Grifters, Mary Reilly, High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things, The Queen, Philomena and Victoria & Abdul, directed it so it was always going to be more commercially palatable than Marguerite. Even though Streep is the headliner, Grant actually has more screen time. She jokingly remarked that she would never be paired with Grant, “I always thought I was too old. But he got older.” Ever since Grant embraced his disgrace, it improved the quality of his work tremendously. There is a certain freedom to embracing your mortality and destroying your golden boy persona. He may be no Streep, but he is perfect in the role even if the role is a bit on the nose.
Florence Foster Jenkins is a biopic about the titular real life dreadful singer, and it is generally faithful to the strange but true story of a wealthy woman who decided that in spite of having zero talent, she was a great singer and would perform. We meet the grand lady when her ambitions are going beyond creating tableaus. She is looking for a pianist, and Cosme acts as the person that the viewer relates to the most out of all the characters as he has to figure out how to best cater to his new boss’ needs. Bayfield acts as the interlocutor between reality and fantasy, orients Cosme on how to navigate work and life rooted in dreams and acts as our guide to a world with different values. Initially he is viewed as an opportunist, someone willing to hitch his wagon to a wealthy benefactor to achieve more luxury than he could have on his own using his talents, but his high wire act of prioritizing her happiness and still existing and surviving in the real world suggests that he worked incredibly hard to make her fantasy into a reality.
Frears is really great at odd couple movies usually with an older woman and a younger man, but after seeing Victoria & Abdul, he is really good at getting us to root for the establishment and see the vulnerability in the one with the most power. To be fair, Jenkins is easy to root for. She may have been wealthy, but her life seemed full of trauma and loss. Normally it would be infuriating to think that she was reinforcing an existing system that rewarded a lack of talent, experience and skill except for her own personal pleasure and ambition, but Florence Foster Jenkins basically frames it that she deserves some measure of satisfaction and happiness. Streep has a hard job. She could end up seeming like a selfish, maladjusted jerk like Tommy Wiseau in The Disaster Artist, but Jenkins never annoyed me. The physical limits that she put on her relationship out of concern for Bayfield’s well being; her undeniable love of and temporary exile from music and her instinctual decision to hire artists who were more at her level instead of the best suggests a woman who at worst was delusional, but still managed to be considerate and realistic instead of a diva.
Florence Foster Jenkins is Frears’ take on a happy trio. These three people with very different experiences at different stages in their lives must come together then treat each other tenderly while rooting for each other while keeping a fragile hope aloft like a bubble that could burst at any moment. There is a great scene when Jenkins visits Cosme at home without the benefit of Bayfield to smooth out the oddities yet when he witnesses her vulnerability, he reacts well. There are so many refreshing images of male empathy and sensitivity, especially during moments when a flat-footed, awkward response would be understandable.
The main point of Florence Foster Jenkins is what is acceptable behavior and what makes that behavior acceptable. My favorite speech in the films comes from Bayfield, “Oh, you think that I didn’t have ambition? I was a good actor. But I was never going to be a great actor. It was very very hard to admit that to myself. But once I had, I felt free from the tyranny of ambition. I started to live. Is ours not a happy world, Cosme? Do we not have fun?” In the film, we see this ambition when he suggests to Jenkins that he recite some lines as part of her performance, and she definitively rejects his suggestion. Even Cosme gets more professional satisfaction than Bayfield in this film. There is an altruistic element to his opportunism, and he never exhibits a fragile male ego. He sacrifices his ambition to someone who can achieve her dream—a rare story for men, even men whose well-being depends on a more powerful woman. The how is a technicality. There is freedom in facing the reality of your life and making others happy. Everyone deserves to be the star of their own show, and if it can’t be you, instead of greeting it with bitterness, give that opportunity to someone else.
Nina Arianda, the scene stealer in Stan & Ollie, does it again in Florence Foster Jenkins. She plays a minor character in the movie, but her story arc and relationship to the titular character mirrors how the viewer sees Jenkins. Her transformation is an emotional microcosm that explains how Jenkins got as far as she did. Both reactions are true. Her first reaction is honest and without guile, and her second reaction is kind and enthusiastic, but neither reaction is mean-spirited. She goes from being an outsider who sees the truth about the emperor to realizing that the emperor is an outsider like her. Arianda makes every moment count. I need her in everything.
Florence Foster Jenkins is about how it takes a village (and money) to make dreams come true. The money is not enough. Empathy is a key ingredient. Generosity of spirit allows someone else to take center stage. In the end, the film suggests that Jenkins really knew that it was all a dream, but she wanted to have that moment. G. K. Chesterton said, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” I don’t think that the movie’s characterization of Jenkins’ self-awareness was accurate, but it is encouraging. Some people have talent. She has money. Work with what you’ve got. Unlike The Disaster Artist, I didn’t watch the movie with my arms folded and never begrudged her success.
Florence Foster Jenkins is an old-fashioned, sweet movie. While it is suitable for all audiences, it could elicit questions about how someone can get syphilis if you have a young attentive listener watching it with you. There is a bit of lively partying, but it is fairly tame, but there is alcohol and hiding the girl in your bed hijinks. The image of a bathtub filled with potato salad may make you want to puke, but it is brief. If Streep is in a movie, how can you not give it a chance, but Grant fans should definitely come running to.