Florence Foster Jenkins

It's the beginning of our new season tomorrow. We always try to select a film that will be popular with our target audience so that they will come along and join for the year, and this time we have selected Florence Foster Jenkins.

Over the period that we have been running our club we've screened several earlier films by Stephen Frears including The Queen and Philomena. Our audiences enjoyed both of these very much and both screenings were well attended. Thus all being well we will have a large audience tomorrow.

I wrote my notes earlier today, and here they are:
 

Florence Foster Jenkins

UK 2016                      110 minutes

Director:                      Stephen Frears

Starring:                        Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg and Rebecca Ferguson

“As Les Dawson proved with such precision, any fool can play the piano badly, but it takes real skill to play it brilliantly badly. Similarly, Morecambe and Wise knew that the perfect way to mangle “Grieg’s piano concerto by Grieg” was to play “all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”. Now, to the august list of superbly maladroit comedic musicians we may add Meryl Streep, who takes centre stage in this very likable, frequently hilarious, yet still poignant tragi-comedy from director Stephen Frears.”

 

Mark Kermode

Despite her generally poor singing ability Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) aspires to become an opera singer with the help of her husband St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) and her pianist Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg).

 Florence Foster Jenkins became a prominent cult figure in New York City musical circles from the 1920s to the 1940s, with eminent musicians as varied as Cole Porter and Enrico Caruso as her fans. She had initially trained as a pianist, but after an injury to her arm put an end to this she decided to use a substantial inheritance to resume her musical career as a singer. Initially she performed small recitals with attendance only by personal invitation and with music critics specifically excluded, but in 1944 she gave a public recital at Carnegie Hall.  The reviews of the performance were scathing and sarcastic, and shortly afterwards she had a heart attack and died.

Given the strange events of Florence Foster Jenkins’ life it is not surprising to find that it has provided inspiration for a number of plays and films. The most widely produced play is Glorious! which initially ran in the West End starring Maureen Lipman and which was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy; it has since been performed in more than 40 countries worldwide. The award-winning 2015 French Film Marguerite was also loosely based on the life of Florence Foster Jenkins although the main character was called Marguerite Dumont, a tribute to Margaret Dumont who had initially trained as a singer before becoming a comic foil to the Marx Brothers in so many of their films.

Recent films from by Stephen Frears have included The Queen (2006) starring Helen Mirren and Philomena (2013) starring Judi Dench. Both films were artistically successful, especially The Queen with Helen Mirren winning an Oscar and BAFTA among numerous other awards in the title role. Florence Foster Jenkins has only just been released in the US but it is reasonable to assume that it will appear prominently in the nominations during the forthcoming awards season.

 

Here's the trailer:

 

And here is Margaret Dumont:

 

A Royal Night Out

After a quiet period during the Summer, at least in terms of our film club, we started our new season with A Royal Night Out - we hoped it would be a crown-puller, but we only managed a small audience although they were pretty thirty and bar takings were good.

In advance of the film I wondered if it was going to be a sequel to The King's Speech or a prequel to The Queen.  In the event it was neither, and although it was enjoyable with some good performances it was less real than the whole of the Harry Potter saga.

Here are my notes:

A Royal Night Out

UK 2014                      127 minutes

Director:                      Julian Jarrold

Starring:                        Bel Powley, Sarah Gadon, Emily Watson and Rupert Everett

 “…the Windsors are given a sitcom-style veneer of just-like-us approachability in A Royal Night Out – a largely fictional romp that plays as a slab of official palace history as rewritten by Enid Blyton. That may sound ghastly, yet Julian Jarrold’s film has cheerily naff charm in spades. Following the young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret as they shed their regal cocoon, joining the great unwashed for the VE Day celebrations, it’s speculative history jauntily dressed as a cut-glass entry in the one-wild-night teen subgenre.”

Guy Lodge

In a broadcast speech to commemorate VE Day on 8 May 1945 Churchill said “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing”: in London there were three days of uproarious celebration and in Buckingham Palace George VI (Rupert Everett) and Queen Elizabeth (Emily Watson) reluctantly agree that Princesses Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) and Margaret (Bel Powley) might be allowed to have a night out on the town in the company of carefully selected chaperones.

The initial premise of the film is correct, but the development of the plot is entirely fictional: in 1945 Princess Margaret was only fourteen, the princesses went out in a group of 16 that included military protection, and rather than attending a party at the Ritz the princesses were allowed only to mingle with the crowds that filled the roads around Buckingham Palace.

Justin Jarrold began his career on TV where he directed an episode of Coronation Street before moving on to directing episodes of Cracker and Silent Witness.  After directing several TV films he made his cinema debut with Kinky Boots (2005), following this with Becoming Jane (2007) and Brideshead Revisited (2008).  His most recent TV work has included Appropriate Adult (2011), a dramatization of the life of Fred and Rosemary West, The Girl (2012), about Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren while he was making The Birds, and the mini-series The Great Train Robbery (2013).  He is currently working on The Crown, a TV series about the royal family.

Philomena

And suddently it's the end of another season.  We've been saving the best until last, or rather we had to wait until Philomena was avilavble on DVD.

To boost our audience numbers we're serving Irish stew and cheeses, and hopefully a load of Guinness will arrive here tomorrow.  Meanwhile I've just finished my notes:

Philomena

UK 2013                      98 minutes

Director:                      Stephen Frears

Starring:                        Judi Dench, Steve Coogan and Anna Maxwell Martin

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for four Oscars, including Best Film, Best Actress (Judi Dench) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Steve Coogan)
• Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay (Steve Coogan) and nominations for Best Actress (Judi Dench), Best Film and Best British Film
• A further 19 wins and 36 nominations

“Philomena is something yearned for and lusted after by film-makers and journalists alike – a really good story.  It's a powerful and heartfelt drama, based on a real case, with a sledgehammer emotional punch and a stellar performance from Judi Dench, along with an intelligently judged supporting contribution from Steve Coogan.  Yet the film's apparent simplicity and force come to us flavoured with subtle nuances and subtexts, left there by the people who brought this story to the public.”

Peter Bradshaw

 Following his unexpected defenestration as New Labour Director of Communications in 2002 Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) is working as a freelance journalist when he comes across the extraordinary story of an elderly Irish woman called Philomena Lee (Judi Dench): as a teenage unmarried mother she had been placed in one of the Irish Republic’s notorious Magdalene Laundries (“Why do they call this heartless place Our Lady of Charity?”) and her son was put up for adoption by childless Catholic Americans, and now in her old age she wants to track him down.  Sixsmith then takes Philomena to America on a mission to America in search of her son.

The film received its premier at the Venice Film Festival where it received rave reviews, was nominated for the Golden Lion and won the award for Best Screenplay.  Judi Dench also won great praise for her performance, with Catherine Shoard in The Observer commenting:

"At 78, she skips through scenes, hitting a dozen bases a minute, raising laughs here, tears there, never breaking sweat. This might be the sort of thing she can do in her sleep, but Dench never gives anything less than full welly.”

However when it came to the awards season Judi Dench lost out in both the Oscars and BAFTAs to Cate Blanchett’s barnstorming performance as Jasmine in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine.  Steve Coogan as Martin Sixsmith proves himself to be a good actor, but it is Dench who is the dramatic focus of the film and director Stephen Frears, in his best film since The Queen (2006), uses a steady hand to guide the two of them on their odd couple road trip around Ireland and America.


And here's the trailer:

 

Films for the Jubilee

Everyone seems to be getting excited about the Cultural Olympiad linked to the Olympic Games (apparently they're happening in London and other venues around the country during the summer).  But to date I've not seen much about any cultural events to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee.

Following her success in Elizabeth Cate Blanchett returned to the role in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which was set at the time of the Spanish Armada.  Despite a number of inaccuracies and liberties with history I enjoyed it very much and it went down well when we screened it for our Film Society.  On this basis I wonder if there is any mileage in Helen Mirren returning to the role of Elizabeth II in a sequel to The Queen.  In the first film Michael Sheen was uncannily brilliant portraying Blair in his early pomp, but I'd be struggling to cast either Cameron or Clegg.

Here are my notes for The Golden Age:  

ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE

UK, 2007 (114 minutes)

Director:          Shekhar Kapur

Starring:          Cate Blanchett, Clive Owen and Geoffrey Rush

Awards and Nominations

Oscars

Won                            Oscar for Best Costumes
Nominated                  Cate Blanchett (Actress in a Leading Role)

BAFTAS                     Four nominations, including Cate Blanchett for Best Leading Actress

A further three wins and seven nominations

In 1585 Catholic Spain, the most powerful country in Europe, is plotting to invade England and overthrow the heretic Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett).  Philip II has built an Armada and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots gives him the excuse he needs to launch it.  A combination of the naval skills of Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), Spanish miscalculation and the English weather allow a numerically inferior English fleet to destroy the Armada and save both Queen and country.

 In the four centuries since her death Elizabeth I has become a chameleon figure who can reflect the cultural and political concerns of the age which chooses to portray her – especially in films and on TV.  In The Sea Hawk (1940) Flora Robson portrayed Elizabeth vigorously defending her Kingdom against foreign invasion, a situation with obvious parallels to the events of the Second World War; in the early 1970s Glenda Jackson gave a performance with a distinct feminist flavour in Elizabeth R; and in Shakespeare in Love (1998) Judi Dench transformed Elizabeth into a drama-loving deus (dea?) ex machina who resolved the complexities of the plot, while at the same time providing Shakespeare with an abundance of source material for his future plays.  Elizabeth I has also appeared memorably in both Black Adder and Doctor Who.

Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Elizabeth in Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) offers a very different view of the queen, but one which again has similarities with our own recent history.  The first film shows the real dangers that Elizabeth faces both during the reign of her half-sister and after gaining the crown herself, when she has to overcome attempts to dethrone her by disaffected courtiers as well as defeating external rebellions, eventually realising that in order to consolidate her power and retain the throne she needs to remain unmarried.  In the later film Elizabeth is still receiving suitors from across Europe, but at the same time Catholic powers in Europe are plotting to overthrow her: she survives an unsuccessful assassination plot by religious zealots and then unites her subjects by portraying herself as a moderate who will defend English Protestants and Catholics against the fundamentalist practices of the Spanish Inquisition that would follow a successful invasion by the Spanish Armada.

Shekhar Kapur has rejected claims that his film is anti-Catholic; he sees it rather as a conflict between Philip who had no ability to encompass diversity or contradiction and Elizabeth who had a feminine ability to do precisely that.  This perspective compels him to interpret history with a significant degree of artistic licence: in 1585 Elizabeth was 52, although the film shows her still receiving suitors; Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, is situated on the flat plains of Northamptonshire rather than on the banks of a picturesque loch; and Sir Walter Raleigh played only a minor in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.  In Alan Bennett’s memorable phrase this is histrionics rather than history, but it follows in a glorious tradition that we can trace back to Shakespeare.  Did anyone ever expect Richard III to give an accurate picture of pre-Tudor history?

Here's the trailer:

Tamara Drewe

For once I'm actually ahead of myself.  We'll be screening Tamara Drewe on Thursday and I finished my notes last week.

Tamara Drewe


UK 2010 114 minutes

Director: Stephen Frears

Starring: Gemma Arterton, Dominic Cooper, Luke Evans, Roger Allam and Tamsin Greig

Nominations and Awards

• Nominated for two awards

“Like the filthiest possible feature-length episode of The Archers, and with a tiny conceptual dash of Straw Dogs, Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel series Tamara Drewe has been converted into a fantastically mad and undeniably entertaining bucolic romp...”

Peter Bradshaw

Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a successful newspaper columnist, returns to the picturesque Dorset village of Ewedown where she grew up with plans to write a chick-lit bestseller. Her ex-boyfriend Andy (Luke Evans) has not moved away and realises that he is still in love with her, but Tamara begins a passionate relationship with Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), a narcissistic rock star. The village also includes a writers’ retreat run by crime writer and serial adulterer Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) who also takes a fancy to Tamara. Two young village girls, bored with their empty lives, sneak into Tamara’s house and use her computer to send an identical Valentine message to all three men.

The film is based on a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds which appeared first as a weekly strip in The Guardian before being published as a book. If the story sounds familiar it is because Simmonds has reworked Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd in a contemporary rural setting and has used the plot both to satirise the pretensions of literary life, a recurrent theme in her work, as well as to expose the crisis in the modern countryside, where people commit deplorable acts out of resentment and sheer boredom.

Stephen Frears (and screenplay writer Moira Buffini) have turned the story into another “State of the Nation” film that have featured regularly in Frears’ long career. Frears has made twenty feature films as diverse as My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity and The Queen, but as Philip French has noted he has shown an interest in certain recurrent themes and situations, including the taking of moral decisions in precarious situations, the secret manipulation of other people’s lives and the often unintended consequences of everyday actions.

Gemma Arterton’s first film appearance was as the Head Girl in St Trinians and her first role of significance was the Bond girl Strawberry Fields in A Quantum of Solace. She subsequently played Tess in a TV adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Immediately before Tamara Drewe she appeared in the blockbusters Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia, and she recently received rave reviews for her performance on stage in Ibsen’s The Master Builder at the Almeida.

Here's the trailer: