Feel the width

Timing! This arrived just as I'd finished the lightweight Spanish potboiler I'd been reading (a novel by the multi-talented Kitty Harri). Will it last me till the end of lockdown? Pleasurable anticipation.

Another quiet day at home. I know, this is not unusual. Soundtrack: courtesy of The Guardian. Speaking of music on a rather different plane, last night's film was Marguerite, one of two films based on the "career" of Florence Foster Jenkins, famed for her terrible voice, which were released almost simultaneously. The other one was a Hollywood offering with Meryl Streep in the title role. 

This was a fictionalised version set in France in the 1920s, with Marguerite played by Catherine Frot. She's one of my favourite actresses, not as famous as she should be, and richly deserved the César for best actress she received for this. This could be played for laughs, and there are some, but Frot and director Xavier Giannoli are better than this. Marguerite is egotistical, yes, but she's also touchingly innocent, lonely and desperate for love and attention, which she is certainly not getting from her husband. Frot conveys her vulnerability and the fact that despite her obvious lack of talent, music is the passion of her life. In the end she is truly the heroine of her story, surrounded by people who are sycophantic, hypocritical and cowardly. They come out of it worse than she does. Despite an excess of superfluous eccentric characters, it kept us hooked.

Lunch diary: a lentil and sausage casserole with fried egg on the side, and fresh mango for afters.