Stephen Frears (The Queen, Philomena, My Beautiful Laundrette) directs Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins; the true story of the New York heiress who believed, incorrectly, that she could sing.
Obsessively pursuing her dreams of opera stardom, Foster Jenkins is blissfully unaware that while the voice she hears in her head is beautiful, to her audience, it’s comically bad.
Her manager, aristocratic English actor St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), lovingly protects her from this painful reality. But when she decides to give a public concert at Carnegie Hall in 1944, he faces his greatest challenge yet.
An almost unbelievable true story of self-delusion (it was recently tapped as inspiration for another film, the French Marguerite) but also a heartening look at the power of self-belief, it offers excellent central performances – with Streep typically brilliant and Grant on restrained, unusually steely form – in a film that’s got warmth, humour and charm to spare.