John Carney’s new feelgood family drama succeeds on chemistry and heart.
At its heart, Flora and Son, the newest offering from John Carney of Once and Sing Street fame, is a hangout pic. The great bulk of the movie’s runtime features characters hanging out one-on-one in different configurations. The eponymous Flora (Eve Hewson) and her teenage son Max (Oren Kinlan) take up the bulk of the screen time, with Flora’s remote guitar lessons with a washed-up L.A. musician, Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), making up most of the rest. If these two pairs didn’t have real, honest, palpable chemistry, Flora and Son would bomb harder than a bad Bob Dylan cover at open mic night. The fact that it doesn’t, delivering an entertaining, sweet, heartfelt movie about the challenges of family and the power of music, says everything that needs to be said about these three main performances.
Flora and Son follows Flora and Max, a single mum and her teenage son who’s rapidly spiraling into delinquency in their hometown of Dublin, Ireland. After yet another run-in with the police, they encourage Flora to find her son a hobby before he ends up in prison. She discovers a battered old acoustic guitar in a dumpster, which she restores, only to discover Max is more of an EDM/hip-hop/pop guy. She decides to take up the guitar herself, leading her to Jeff after a deep-dive into the cringe-inducing world of YouTube guitar tutorials.
The remainder of the movie focuses on Flora connecting with Max over music, discovering a shared love of electronica, and her burgeoning relationship with Jeff, flowering from barre chords to the beginnings of a long-distance relationship. Given that it’s so much of the focus of the movie, how you feel about the idea of Gordon-Levitt doing his best Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam impersonation on Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes” will likely decide how much you’ll enjoy Flora and Son.
how you feel about the idea of Gordon-Levitt doing his best Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam impersonation on Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes” will likely decide how much you’ll enjoy Flora and Son.
Those willing to give Flora and Son a chance are in for a treat, though, especially with the three main actors. Hewson, in particular, steals the show with an outright hilarious performance as the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed Flora. She’s got all kinds of flaws and is far from a perfect mom, but she clearly loves her son. Even better still, she meets him where he’s at. In the process, she shows him he’s loved and supported while encouraging a new hobby and a new way to express himself, while creating a new bond between them in the process. She might not look or talk like your stereotypical momfluencer but that makes her an even better mom.
It also adds a bit of weight to what is mostly a light, fun, entertaining, moving story about a family’s struggles. It feels refreshing to show a mother who doesn’t already have everything completely figured out but who loves her son and is trying her best, regardless. Not only is it just enjoyable, entertaining viewing, it feels important. Deep, humane depictions of mothers of all kinds and the struggles they go through can help people who don’t have it all worked out but are still trying to know that it’s okay to not be okay, that they don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent.
Flora and Son is streaming now on Apple TV
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