This is an unusually sick, sad and true-life story about a bunch of "sick" opportunistic people who took advantage of a mentally and, perhaps, physically sick woman merely because she was wealthy and demented and had no sense of what a fool she had become.
I can find no redeeming quality to the movie. It was not enjoyable, enlightening, or educational; it was just SICK! It you want to watch it once, go ahead. But I, for one, didn't like seeing a person being made a clown of simply because her disease made her engage in clownish behavior. If you want to see a freak show, go to the carnival--not the movies.
I have enjoyed Meryl Streep's work for decades and have loved her talent for taking on the roles of people we know and remember well. But, I have never seen her demean a real person as she did in this movie. Here, she portrayed Florence Foster Jenkins in 1944 at the age of 76.
Jenkins was a wealthy person who had contracted syphilis from her first husband, Dr. Frank Thornton Jenkins, at about the age of 18. After finding out she had contacted syphilis from him, she reportedly divorced him and never spoke of him again—although she did (privately) in movie. She did, however, retain his surname.
Her second husband, St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), takes advantage of her money and lack of self-knowledge about how terrible her singing ability really was. Later her pianist, Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg), does the same thing. (Good people don't let their loved ones make fools of themselves, but they did.)
However, it was not just the people closest to her who lived off of her and laughed at her. There were many famous people of the day that were also enjoying her sick foolishness too. These people included Arturo Toscanini (John Kavanagh), Lily Pons, Cole Porter, Tallulah Bankhead, and even Enrico Caruso (not portrayed in the movie). Many of these same people came to Carnegie Hall to hear her make a fool of herself.
According to Wikipedia:
"At the age of 76, Jenkins finally yielded to public demand and booked Carnegie Hall for a general-admission performance on October 25, 1944. Tickets for the event sold out weeks in advance; the demand was such that an estimated 2,000 people were turned away at the door.[20] Numerous celebrities attended, including Porter, Marge Champion, Gian Carlo Menotti, Kitty Carlisle and Lily Pons with her husband, Andre Kostelanetz, who composed a song for the recital. McMoon later recalled an "especially noteworthy" moment: " (When she sang) 'If my silhouette does not convince you yet/My figure surely will' (from Adele's aria in Die Fledermaus), she put her hands righteously to her hips and went into a circular dance that was the most ludicrous thing I have ever seen. And created a pandemonium in the place. One famous actress had to be carried out of her box because she became so hysterical."
Since ticket distribution was out of Jenkins's control for the first time, mockers, scoffers, and critics could no longer be kept at bay. The following morning's newspapers were filled with scathing, sarcastic reviews that devastated Jenkins, according to Bayfield. "(Mrs. Jenkins) has a great voice," wrote the New York Sun critic. "In fact, she can sing everything except notes ... Much of her singing was hopelessly lacking in a semblance of pitch, but the further a note was from its proper elevation the more the audience laughed and applauded." The New York Post was even less charitable: "Lady Florence ... indulged last night in one of the weirdest mass jokes New York has ever seen.
This, to me, is a callous thing to do. I think the movie is callous too. This is not a comedy, it is pathos. Laughing at this movie would be a bit like laughing while watching The Elephant Man.
