Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)
Country: GB/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1. 111m
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson
Synopsis:
1944, New York: Mrs Jenkins, a great patron of the arts, is also an avid music lover and amateur singer, whom no one, least of all her doting husband, has thought to inform that she can't sing a note in tune. She now resolves to share her passion with the concert-going public.
Review:
Like the French jazz age-set Marguerite the previous year, based on the same true life personage as this, the success of the film rests with our being able to laugh but still view the fragile woman behind the grotesquerie with affection. Here Streep's performance fails quite to score a bull's eye in the same way as Frot's did (just too pantomime dame?) but Grant is touching as the, perhaps misguided, husband who has made it his life's work to make her happy. The real plum of the piece, though, has to be Helberg's fastidious, mellifluently fingered accompanist.
Country: GB/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1. 111m
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson
Synopsis:
1944, New York: Mrs Jenkins, a great patron of the arts, is also an avid music lover and amateur singer, whom no one, least of all her doting husband, has thought to inform that she can't sing a note in tune. She now resolves to share her passion with the concert-going public.
Review:
Like the French jazz age-set Marguerite the previous year, based on the same true life personage as this, the success of the film rests with our being able to laugh but still view the fragile woman behind the grotesquerie with affection. Here Streep's performance fails quite to score a bull's eye in the same way as Frot's did (just too pantomime dame?) but Grant is touching as the, perhaps misguided, husband who has made it his life's work to make her happy. The real plum of the piece, though, has to be Helberg's fastidious, mellifluently fingered accompanist.
Country: GB/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1. 111m
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson
Synopsis:
1944, New York: Mrs Jenkins, a great patron of the arts, is also an avid music lover and amateur singer, whom no one, least of all her doting husband, has thought to inform that she can't sing a note in tune. She now resolves to share her passion with the concert-going public.
Review:
Like the French jazz age-set Marguerite the previous year, based on the same true life personage as this, the success of the film rests with our being able to laugh but still view the fragile woman behind the grotesquerie with affection. Here Streep's performance fails quite to score a bull's eye in the same way as Frot's did (just too pantomime dame?) but Grant is touching as the, perhaps misguided, husband who has made it his life's work to make her happy. The real plum of the piece, though, has to be Helberg's fastidious, mellifluently fingered accompanist.