With "I Saw The Light," "Miles Ahead," and "Born To Be Blue," we’ll have our fill of music biopics about talented legends in the months ahead, but Stephen Frears‘ "Florence Foster Jenkins" offers something different — a story about someone woefully untalented who still made it to the big stage. And the story is all true.
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Starring Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Nina Arianda, the story centers on the titular woman, an heiress and socialite, who was an astonishingly terrible opera singer, who was blind to her own lack of talent, and pursued a career anyway, all while being protected from the truth by her devoted manager. Here’s the official synopsis:
The true story of Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep), the legendary New York heiress and socialite who obsessively pursued her dream of becoming a great singer. The voice she heard in her head was beautiful, but to everyone else it was hilariously awful. Her “husband” and manager, St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) an aristocratic English actor, was determined to protect his beloved Florence from the truth. But when Florence decided to give a public concert at Carnegie Hall in 1944, St Clair knew he faced his greatest challenge.
The film opens in the U.K. on May 6th, but there’s no U.S. date at the moment. Watch below.
Meryl Streep is going to be fantastic in this