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Florence Foster Jenkins
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (23rd December 2016). |
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The Film
 Founder of the Verdi Club in which she participated in various musical tableaux such as "Oh, Susanna" composer Stephen Foster's "Angel of Inspiration" or as Brünnhilde in "Ride of the Valkyries" – in between Shakespearean monologues by her common law husband St. Clair Bayfield (Four Weddings and a Funeral's Hugh Grant) – for an audience of high society fawners, New York socialite and benefactress to musicians Florence Foster Jenkins (A Cry in the Dark's Meryl Streep) is greatly moved by a performance by Lily Pons with the NBC Symphonic Orchestra to take up voice lessons. Although young pianist and budding composer Cosme McMoon (The Big Bang Theory's Simon Helberg) is initially content to take the one hundred-and-fifty dollar weekly salary to accompany the tone deaf patron through daily lessons – conducted by a self-interested vocal coach (Two Weeks Notice's David Haig) who has already made clear his plans to be away at whatever point Florence plans to perform and has convinced her not to credit him with her coaching lest she his regular students jealous – he has reservations for his own reputation when Florence arranges a performance for the Verdi Club (a "Christmas present" to the members). Having survived the syphilis contracted on her wedding night from first husband Dr. Frank Thornton Jenkins (who was "a bit of an alley cat") for nearly fifty years, Florence claims that she "lives for music" and Cosme discovers discovers just how seasoned St. Clair is at shielding Florence from mockersand scoffers in order to maintain their little "happy world." St. Clair is unable to stop Florence from recording a record, but the private recording is pressed in limited quantities for the members. While St. Clair is away with his mistress Kathleen (Hercules' Rebecca Ferguson) – he and Florence having an agreement since they must abstain in their own intimacy due to her disease – under the guise of a golf trip, Florence has a copy of the record hand-delivered to "The Voice of Firestone" Richard Crooks, and the resulting radio play turns it into the most sought-after recording for all the wrong reasons, and St. Clair comes home to the announcement that Florence has booked performance at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the troops. Up against a thousand rowdy soldiers, celebrities – including mocking Cole Porter (Teen Wolf's Mark Arnold) and drunk Tallulah Bankhead (Nat Luurtsema) – a New York Post reporter (Rush's Christian McKay) who refuses to be bought and sees the performance as "a pathetic, vainglorious display of egotism," and other members of "the hoodlum element," St. Clair and Cosme fear for Florence's health and state of mind in the face of reality. Rather lightweight Oscar-bait from Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons), Florence Foster Jenkins disappoints in relating the potentially interesting little-known true story of how "the world's worst opera singer" made a best-selling album and sold out her performance at Carnegie Hall at the height of World War II. The filmmakers rely so much on the viewer loving delusional Florence and believing in St. Clair's devotion to her simply because they are played by Streep and Grant that the film's veering from the comedy of the first half to the tear-jerking drama of the latter half lacks the required emotional depth. The true state of Florence's health is revealed early on but only one brief scene is afforded to Florence's regret that she and St. Clair could never have a family, with the emotional turmoil of St. Clair's relationship with Kathleen given more screen time. Grant's demonstration of St. Clair's acting abilities is so overplayed that the revelation that Florence had earlier in their relationship shielded him from bad reviews makes her seem even more out of touch. It is never clarified as to whether she actually listened to her recording privately or on the radio and she is too easily mollified during the concert sequence as the scoffers are shouted down. When Florence discovers the contents of the New York Post review in spite of St. Clair's and Cosme's covert efforts to conceal it, Streep's stumbling through the streets and eventual collapse feels more obligatory than devastating. Helberg has little to do but employ subtle (some more so than others) comic reactions to Streep's off-key notes but is a similarly underdeveloped character. The period production design is as handsome as the costumes and the photography of (Danny Cohen's The Danish Girl), while the underscore of Alexandre Desplat (The King's Speech) goes largely unnoticed apart from a jazzy interpolation of Chopin's Prelude in E-minor.
Video
Paramount's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.40:1 widescreen transfer of this Arri Alexa-photographed production is every bit as sterling as one would expect, showing off the textures of production and costume design as well as the make-up to give Grant and Streep even more weathered appearances.
Audio
The primary DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is full-bodied with busy surrounds during the city exteriors and concert interiors, underscoring, and Streep's high notes manage to pierce the ear even though they do not actually overshoot the VU levels as they are seen doing in the film during Florence's recording session. Other audio options include a Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 dub and English Descriptive Audio in Dolby Digital 2.0. Optional English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles are also provided.
Extras
"Ours Is a Happy World" (5:01) is a collection of talking heads in which Streep, Grant, Helberg, Frears, and writer Nicholas Martin comment on the story and their impressions of the real Florence. In "The Music and Songs of Florence" (4:01), musical director Terry Davies (The Illusionist) and composer Desplat join in to discuss their attempts not to reproduce the recordings while Helberg reveals that he was really playing a silenced piano (with the output fed into a computer) while Streep sung live on-camera. In "Designing the Look" (3:43), costume designer Consolata Boyle (The Queen) and production designer Alan MacDonald (Philomena) discuss their efforts to recreate forties New York in the UK. In "From Script to Screen" (4:18), writer Martin discusses the genesis of the project while "World Premiere" (1:58) features more talking heads on the red carpet. In Q&A with Meryl Streep (16:16), moderator and costume designer William Ivey Long (The Producers remake) – who roomed with Streep during their first year at Yale Drama School – discuss the film and her impressions of the real Florence, but the most interesting and substantial featurette is actually "Live at Carnegie Hall" (10:09) in which historian Gino Francesconi discusses how he started as an usher at Carnegie Hall, moved up to Backstage Artists' Attendant, to the facility's first historian. He reveals that he discovered in 1986 while preparing an exhibition for the hall's hundredth anniversary that they actually had very little in the way of archival materials and had to advertise in trade publications, whereupon he received an influx of tickets, programs, and audio recordings. It was during this period that he learned of Florence Foster Jenkins, her contributions to the arts, her performance, and her best-selling record (Francesconi also appeared in the 2016 German feature-length documentary The Florence Foster Jenkins Story). The Deleted Scenes (6:18) are not particularly revealing, although they do touch upon plot elements, including the first mentions of Florence's leather bag she carries on her at all times and aversion to pointy objects, as well as her "Queen of the Night" performance that is mentioned in the final cut as one of the highlights of her performance but never seen.
Overall
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