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Set in New York during the mid 1940s, Stephen Frears’ film about a real-life, upper-class heiress with a zest for music and charitable works gives Meryl Streep another juicy role that taps into even more of her seemingly boundless talent as an actress, and as a singer (many of her more recent roles have utilized her vocal talent), even as a very good singer who has to sing quite badly. A former child prodigy at the piano who can no longer play due to an injured hand, Foster finds a way to keep herself in the limelight when she becomes a singer of opera, which she has done for friends or in small venues, while her doting husband-at-heart, St. Clair Bayfield, massages the crowd to her favor, whether through sympathy for their social enablers, to whom Florence Foster Jenkins has been a great benefactor of their art, or with a bit of bribery for members of the press, who go on to give warm reviews to her performances.
