The story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York heiress who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite having a terrible singing voice.
Director: Stephen Frears
Stars: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4136084/
22 songs in the Soundtracks, 9 Performed by Meryl Streep, 8 with Simon Helberg, 1 Performed by Florence Foster Jenkins.
I'm afraid that I don't see the value in this story. She's rich, sings badly, has had syphilis for 50 years (and taken mercury and arsenic as curatives), and is in love with her husband, but they can't be intimate (no penicillin to kill the disease yet; she dies in '44). Since she does a lot to support music, some highly skilled people give her singing lessons (with ambiguous encouragement), or otherwise support her efforts. But she can't sing, and some interpret her performance as planned comedy. When she discovers the bad review of her Carnegie Hall performance (she bought the house and donated the tickets) by a dominant music critic, the combined exhaustion of the performance followed by her reaction to the review lead to her collapse.
I kept waiting to care about anyone, but it never happened.
We did get to hear MS sing fairly well in a fantasy/hallucination at the end of the film. Otherwise it was a lot of ear-itation.
Rated 6.8 (44,143)
distr. Paramount, dir. Frears; 6
