Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) was a society lady in New York City who was a well-known patron of the arts there, especially where music was concerned, but her dearest wish was to get involved in a performing capacity. It was all very well putting up the money for these productions, a large inheritance from her father which kept her comfortable, but would not it be more satisfying to be up on the stage, singing her heart out, and gathering the acclaim of an appreciative audience? She did appear in "living tableau" to accompany the orchestra's renditions of classical pieces on the stage, but as she told her husband St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), she wanted to present a concert where she sang herself - what could possibly go wrong?
If you have heard of Florence Foster Jenkins, at least prior to this film (David Bowie was a fan), then you would be well aware of what was amiss, and that was her utter lack of talent. Nicholas Martin's script opted to depict her as oblivious to her great deficiencies in musical ability, though there was some dispute about that as the real Florence was apparently both thicker skinned when it came to criticism and not as sweet-natured as Streep portrayed her, but this offered opportunities to explore something very modern to the twenty-first century, which was whether the novelties, the figures of fun in our culture and media, were worth sending up or getting angry about their undeserved fame, or whether they had more feelings than were often acknowledged.
The villains of the story were those who would have told Florence to her face that she was absolutely dreadful at performing, and the biggest baddie of all was Christian McKay as a deeply unimpressed critic (yet another movie where the critics got it in the neck - there was a defensive streak emerging in many of these) who wants to write a review lambasting her. But on the other side of that was Bayfield, who could have been viewed as the male equivalent of a gold-digger, telling his wife whatever she wanted to hear in return for a portion of her wealth, yet in actual fact was shown to have nothing but affection and respect for her. Grant, usually regarded as a dramatic lightweight thanks to all those frothy comedy roles he was typecast in, was the real surprise here.
You expected Streep to nail such a larger than life personality, and naturally she did all her own singing, replicating the actual inspiration's murdering of various standards with pinpoint accuracy, but working in tandem with an unexpectedly sensitive Grant they brought out an aspect to the character which was curiously tragic. She suffered health problems thanks to contracting syphilis from her husband at age eighteen, and this made Florence a fragile figure much in need of coddling as Bayfield struggled to keep her on an even keel, which lent Grant a number of scenes where he was able to convey genuine feeling in what was essentially a ridiculous premise. This resulted in an experience which gradually became more moving, so you would start laughing at the lady and end up cheering her on.
