pauhaa Review of Florence Foster Jenkins

Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

Entertaining but loses much of the complexity available

[6/10 · 18 October 2018]

I think describing FFJ as "the worst singer ever" is unimaginative and also missleading. She was after all someone who took the probably enormous trouble to learn arias that would take great skill and technique to master. They are not easy to sing "badly", or to even get through at all. Consequently Meryl Streep's vocal performance here is amazing. But the film shows some lack of imagination as well: how about the mystery of how aware Jenkins really was of the quality of her singing, which could hardly be described on a simple axis from bad to good? Also, wasn't Jenkins herself active in creating her own little bubble of audience and her public persona? Here, St Clair Bayfield is shown as single-handedly managing and protecting her, which creates a dynamic both troubling and simplistic.