Stephen Frears/ UK / 2016/ 110 mins

At cinemas nationwide now

It’s often said that the rich can never really be mad, merely eccentric. This is amply shown in the story of wealthy New York heiress and patron of the arts, Florence Foster Jenkins.  On the surface, a jolly, rigorously middle-brow crowd-pleaser about the woman dubbed the ‘Worst Singer in the World’, Stephen Frears’ film has darker, tragic elements that indicate something other than just a  comic delusion of grandeur.

During the final few years of World War II, Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) puts on a series of shows for her friends and the wealthy elite of New York society, smoothly administrated by her husband St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant). Florence can’t sing at all – her soprano is flatter than the vanity vinyl she records as gifts for her friends – but her doting spouse pays off all the critics, and she is allowed to remain in her oblivious little bubble.

That is until, she decides to perform a show at Carnegie Hall for servicemen; a laudable act of charity, but one that threatens to unravel the web of gentle deceit Bayfield has spun.

FFJ is a brisk and witty film, but one that attempts the uneasy balance of painting its lead as sympathetic, while offering us the opportunity to laugh at her, many times over. It risks becoming a one-joke comedy as Florence once more belts out a dog-whistle yelp, accompanied by another extravagant eye-roll and facial twitch from her pianist (Simon Helberg).  It is also revealed that she has suffered from syphilis since the age of eighteen, and the accumulative effects of decades of mercury and arsenic treatments may well be a contributing factor to her mental state.

We then have to ask ourselves whether all this time we have been laughing at a mentally ill woman advancing to tertiary-stage venereal disease. In all honesty, this not-always successful tension helps to raise the film beyond its central conceit.  Streep’s performance elicits both pathos and affection, modulated to perfection.  If she played it too broadly it wouldn’t have worked at all.  Grant has never been better.  He’s caddish in many ways, yet his actions are understandable when the platonic state of his marriage is revealed.  Helberg does a lot with what could again threaten to be a one-note role.  His understandable bafflement at Florence’s voice gives way to a genuine love for his employer.

While the tonal shifts between the comic and tragic sides of the story aren’t resolved and leave some residual discomfort, the film also reminds us of the importance of the arts, especially when bigger world events may make such concerns appear trivial. In today’s climate of increasing austerity and cuts for this sector, Florence Foster Jenkins shows that music and performance can offer a little escapism and a lot of therapy.