REVIEW - FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS (STEPHEN FREARS)

Stephen Frears' Florence Foster Jenkins is a movie about art, or about the absence thereof. It's rather a shame that its treatment of such a sensational story should emulate its subject's simple-minded cluelessness - where she brought great joy and pain alike, and experienced both in even greater amount, this film inspires little more than apathetic appreciation. It's a shoddy showcase for Frears, whose unearned reputation as a mere competent journeyman won't be aided by this unadventurous piece; in fact, Frears contributes an incessant energy to Nicholas Martin's limited, lacklustre screenplay, and keeps the film interesting. As indeed it ought to be - Florence Foster Jenkins herself was a most interesting character, though both Martin and Meryl Streep only momentarily motion toward her many idiosyncrasies, preferring instead a surface-deep portrayal of this woman. They only toy with those idiosyncrasies, proffering whimsical tics and quirks in lieu of substantial characterisation. It's sufficient for light comedy, which Florence Foster Jenkins rarely strives to aspire beyond, but forces one to question if Florence herself is sufficient for light comedy. After all, the film's most persuasive patches are its most dramatic ones, as intelligent, astute grace notes of genuine emotional gravitas are eked out, not least due to the sensitive performances of Hugh Grant and Simon Helberg. They steal the show from Streep, with adequately formed roles to which each actor commits himself with diligence and care. It's in service of a relatively artless film - it doesn't even have the respect for its music to actually present it properly - but a film that's full of art, joy and, regrettably, pain nonetheless.

REVIEW - RICKI AND THE FLASH (JONATHAN DEMME)

A loose little comedy that begs for a little more tightening, Jonathan Demme and Diablo Cody's Ricki and the Flash blurs the distinction between understated and underdeveloped. The premise has promise, but the execution is slack - it's wholly in keeping with the nature of Cody's script, but it gives the film very little to latch onto. Meryl Streep supplies a typically vibrant performance at its centre, though refrains from showboating (as one suspects she may have been intended to) - she, too, is in total co-ordination with the tone of the film, indeed is partly responsible for it, so while this isn't a Streep to savour, there's nothing unsavoury about it. In ways, Ricki and the Flash could have benefitted from a shade more unsavouriness - Demme ably depicts Ricki's fecklessness in his characteristically laidback direction, but leaves her fieriness to emerge only in the occasional barbed line of dialogue, and who knows how much pep could have been provided had he adopted a similarly sharp approach. The film is at its strongest when unleashing Cody's unapologetic bile, if only in manageable doses, onto every stereotype going, even if she can't consistently match the depths of her taste level to the heights of her screenwriting technique. What she can be relied upon to contribute, however, is an amiable attitude toward the squares of society, the freaks and the outcasts whose non-conformity isn't just aesthetic, it's essential. Ricki and the Flash is, in a structural sense as well as a tonal one, vaguely non-conformist; more conviction in one direction or another, and we'd have a film worthy of the talents that worked on it.