“Florence Foster Jenkins” and “Morris From America”
Stephen Frears’s new bio-pic, starring Meryl Streep, and a film with Markees Christmas and Craig Robinson.
By Anthony Lane
Meryl Streep stars in a bio-pic directed by Stephen Frears.
The defining talent of Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) was that she had no talent. Of this she was unaware. As a singer, she could not hit a note（音符）, yet somehow she touched a chord（和弦）—murdering tune（曲调） after tune, and drawing a legion of fans to the scene of the crime. Never has ignorance been such cloudless bliss; her self-delusion, buoyed by those about her, amounted to a kind of genius, and the story of that unknowing has now inspired a bio-pic. “Florence Foster Jenkins,” written by Nicholas Martin and directed by Stephen Frears, stars Meryl Streep in the title role. Who better to play the incompetent Florence than someone whose plenitude of gifts has been an article of faith for almost forty years?
There is something of a pattern here, and a risk. If you want to see real-life women of a certain age incarnated（[ɪn'kɑːnət] 化身的） by the most formidable（可怕的，令人敬畏的） actresses, then Frears is your man. Think of “Philomena” (2013), in which Judi Dench played a simple soul on a quest for her long-lost son. The tale was astutely（敏捷地，伶俐地，狡猾地） told, though it couldn’t avoid a murmur of condescension（[,kɒndɪ'senʃn] 屈尊纡贵，谦虚）. Seven years earlier, in Frears’s “The Queen,” Helen Mirren took the part of Elizabeth II and lent it a musing reflectiveness that, however winning, seemed slightly at odds（争执，矛盾） with the dutiful pragmatist（实用主义者，爱管闲事的人）, braced by common sense, who occupies the British throne. In both cases, sheer dramatic skill threatened to overwhelm the facts of the character, and you half-expect Streep to follow suit（学样子，鹦鹉学舌）. Yet her performance is the most successful of the three; not once do you feel that she knows better than Florence—that the leading lady is looking down on her creation, as it were, with an arch of the eyebrow or a taunting（嘲弄的） glint in the eye. On the contrary, Streep is right there, solidly invested in the folly of Florence’s dreams. When she declares that “music has been, and is, my life,” you believe her.
The first person we meet is not the heroine but her husband, St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), who was once an actor and likes to keep his hand in. Resplendent（华丽的） in white tie and tails, he recites a speech from “Hamlet,” for the benefit of guests at a New York soirée. His delivery is, let us say, more impassioned than convincing, and we are instantly aware that here is someone who has fallen short（不符合标准的，功亏一篑的）. The most touching thing is that he doesn’t seem to mind. To realize that one is second-rate can be an epiphany（顿悟） of sorts, or, at least, an immense（巨大的） relief. St. Clair claims to be “free from the tyranny（ ['tɪr(ə)nɪ]） of ambition,” and you can see his point. In any case, he has found a higher calling. His earthly task is to serve the needs of his wife, who inherited money and, with it, a plush（豪华的，舒服的） sense of entitlement（权利，津贴）. All goes well until, one evening, an old need rears its head（某种风气抬头） again. The tyranny is back. Florence wants to sing.
Frears, whose slyness has deepened with the years, is not averse to teasing. Notice how he delays the first caterwaul（猫叫春的声音）, like a maker of war films who waits to unleash（解开束缚） the opening boom of artillery（大炮）. Before Florence can start her glass-shattering routine, she requires an accompanist, and the movie pauses to consider Cosmé McMoon (Simon Helberg), a reedy（声音高而难听的，芦苇似的） young pianist who applies for the job. Offered a wage of ludicrous generosity, he leaves Florence’s apartment, in Manhattan, with a dizzy grin on his face, and the camera, savoring the moment, watches him drift down the street. Helberg has the long sad mug of a mime（[maɪm]哑剧，滑稽戏） and the body of a boy; instead of strolling（散步）, he seems to hover along（徘徊）, with his hands held stiffly by his side. (You can imagine him in silent pictures, as a hopeful stooge（喜剧里的配角或丑角）.) When Florence finally lets rip, what Frears attends to is not just the noise that she creates, reminiscent of（回忆起） a hyena（ [haɪ'iːnə]土狼） giving birth, but the awestruck（令人惊奇的） expression on Cosmé’s face. Why, he asks himself, is nobody laughing?
The answer, as usual, is money. David Haig, a brisk and cheering presence, plays Carlo Edwards, a vocal coach from the Metropolitan（大都市的） Opera, who regularly provides Florence with private tuition. This he must do, for she is an effusive patron, and his plaudits, as she lurches ferociously off key, are small masterpieces of ambivalence（矛盾情绪）: “There’s no one quite like you,” “You’ve never sounded better,” and the ominous “You’ll never be more ready.” For Florence has plans that soar beyond the limits of her drawing room. In the course of the film, she performs first before a cluster of aging acquaintances, many of them blessedly hard of hearing, and, later, at Carnegie Hall, which is packed, at Florence’s request, with soldiers and sailors, most of them blessedly drunk.
Believe it or not, this did indeed take place, on October 25, 1944: a holy day in the annals of ineptitude（不称职，愚蠢）. (You are taken aback by the Second World War uniforms, and by St. Clair’s report that Florence has “sold out faster than Sinatra（美国歌手）,” because her demeanor（[di'mi:nə]举止，行为）, like her décor, belongs to an earlier age.) If Florence has remained a cult（狂热信徒）, it is thanks to her bravado（虚张声势，冒险） in plowing（耕地） ahead, regardless of her faults. That is certainly the view of Agnes (Nina Arianda), the wife of a rich meathead（傻瓜）, who springs to her feet at the concert, rebukes（指责） the crowd for jeering, and whips up（激起） a storm of applause. Though the film as a whole is less raucous（沙哑的，喧嚣的） than Agnes, it obeys her instructions, bestowing（授予） benign（和蔼的） approval on its subject. The result is at once a work of efficient charm and, to those of us who treasured Frears in his more acerbic（[ə'sɜːbɪk]辛辣的，尖刻的） phase, a mild disappointment. Would the man who made “My Beautiful Laundrette” (1985), “The Grifters” (1990), and two foul-tongued Roddy Doyle adaptations have been quite so tolerant of Florence’s fancies? After all, the wealthy of today are equally flattered and indulged, and, as Frears proved in “Dangerous Liaisons（联络人）” (1988), costume dramas（古装剧） are no excuse for softness. They need a drop of venom in their veins.
The best news about “Florence Foster Jenkins” is that, just when admirers of Hugh Grant were asking if the poor guy would ever get a role of any ripeness（['raɪpnɪs]成熟，老练）, he plucks（采摘） a peach. The dithering(犹豫) that bore him through “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994) and “Notting Hill” (1999) arose not merely from indecision but from a stutter(口吃，结巴） of the spirit—a genuine horror of doing the wrong thing. That fear comes to fruition in St. Clair: his wife does wrong every time she opens her mouth onstage, but he reassures her, time and again, that she is in the right. He pays music critics to be nice; when one of them, refusing the bribe, writes a mean review, St. Clair tries to destroy every copy of the paper in the neighborhood. “For twenty-five years I have kept the mockers and scoffers at bay,” he says. His love, though true, is a perpetual（永恒的） agony, and maybe no one but Grant, writhing with misplaced chivalry（骑士精神）, could bring such reverence（尊严，崇敬） to life. Florence may have been a one-joke wonder, and, to be honest, there is only just enough of her to fill a movie. In the eyes of her husband, however, she is no joke at all.
The title character in “Morris from America” is an African-American boy, aged thirteen, who finds himself dwelling in a most unlikely spot—Heidelberg（海德堡）, the comeliest（好看的，秀丽的） of Germany’s old university towns. Not that Morris (Markees Christmas) is dazed by the beauty that surrounds him; as he tours a museum, with music pulsing through his headphones, the figures in the stained-glass windows and even the heads of the statues begin to nod in time with the beat. That’s the only fantasy sequence in Chad Hartigan’s movie, but we get the hint: why blend in（加入，混合） with a foreign country, when the country can dance to your tune（意译：亦步亦趋）?
Morris is there because his widowed father, Curtis (Craig Robinson), is a coach for the local soccer team. The two of them get on well and warmly, despite disagreeing about varieties of rap, yet from the start we sense something trapped and lonely in the boy; he looms large（显得突出） in the frame, often head on, with nobody around him. The slender plot finds him reaching out, first to a friendly tutor (Carla Juri), who is coaching him in German, and then to a girl named Katrin (Lina Keller), a couple of years his senior—not much of a gulf, but harder to bridge than he would like.
The movie catches Morris on the cusp（尖端）, with his childhood tailing off behind him. He is young enough to wrap one of Katrin’s sweaters around a pillow and hug it tight but bold enough to take Ecstasy when she offers it before a party. Does the kid really merit his place, however, at the hub（中心） of Hartigan’s film? I gradually grew more interested in Curtis, who has his own solitude to cope with. This represents the first non-comic leading role for Robinson (moviegoers（经常看电影的人） will know him from “Pineapple Express” and “Hot Tub Time Machine,” among other films), and he commands it with a gruff and amiable ease. The highlight is not Morris’s worst scrape, when he gets stranded（滞留，搁浅） out of town without cash or a phone, but the speech that Curtis gives after he comes to the rescue. Robinson delivers it in long takes and with tremendous style. “We’re the only two brothers in Heidelberg,” he says. “We gotta stick together.” ♦