‘Flora and Son’ Movie Review

• John Carney has discovered his specialty in making really sincere musicals.
• This legacy is continued in his recent film, Flora and Son.
• The film is vast in a manner that Carney hasn’t quite achieved.

John Carney, the writer-director, has discovered his specialty in making really sincere musicals with a real-world setting that eschew any cynicism, and he’s gotten damn good at it. From 2007’s Once, which exquisitely featured the songs of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, through 2013’s Begin Again and 2016’s Sing Street, Carney has produced endearing contemporary musicals that demonstrate how contemporary music can unite and connect people, regardless of their differences.

This legacy is continued in Carney’s most recent film, Flora and Son. However, while maintaining his trademark style, Flora and Son covers more ground and crosses more categories than we’ve come to anticipate from Carney. The film Flora and Son is vast in a manner that Carney hasn’t quite achieved, but it nevertheless manages to keep the intimacy and emotional impact that Carney can add to a tale through even the most basic decisions.

Flora (Eve Hewson), a young single mother in Dublin who is struggling to raise her son Max (Orén Kinlan), is the main character of Flora and Son, as the title suggests. The neighborhood cops have given Max about as many opportunities as they can, yet Max keeps getting caught stealing. Flora locates and repairs up a guitar as a late birthday present for Max in an effort to try to give her son a passion that doesn’t entail theft. However, since Max shows no interest in playing the guitar, Flora decides to give it a go on her own. To that end, she hires Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an online guitar instructor from Los Angeles, to teach her the basics.

It doesn’t really matter when the movie is as endearing as Flora and Son when Carney is touching many of the same notes that we’ve seen him explore before. For instance, Jeff transforms Flora’s musical outlook with Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and demonstrates the relevance of a great song by blowing her mind with his rendition of “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes).” Jeff also teaches Flora the power and necessity of words. Additionally, Flora demonstrates to Jeff how to improve the songs he has written, giving those tunes a new perspective and inspiring a musical partnership.

As Flora and Son progresses, some of the most heartwarming scenes include a character who connects with someone through music. When Flora learns that Max has been producing his own music on his computer, the two start to connect over their common interests and start working together. They have finally found a common ground. Carney demonstrates the potential of music to help people evolve as a person, not merely how it can help people communicate and become closer to one another. These characters evolve into persons who are more kind, caring, and mindful of those around them as they become more skilled at their instruments and musical skills.

This interaction through music demonstrates that distance is irrelevant. Rather than appearing to Flora on a screen during their practise sessions, Jeff emerges from her computer and is seated in front of her with his guitar as they grow to know one another. It’s a lovely approach to convey the connection these two feel despite their great distance from one another and the bond that is growing between them.

However, as the title implies, Flora and Kid is mostly about a mother and her son and how they are reunited as a result of having a similar love for music. The challenges in this connection aren’t sugarcoated in Carney’s writing, which depicts a mother who would much prefer have her son move in with his father, Ian (Jack Reynor), a fellow musician who once believed he was on the verge of stardom. As they share their interests with one another and eventually develop a common enthusiasm, the gradual progression of these two getting to know one another feels realistic and natural. At Sundance, there were a lot of movies about parent-child relationships, including Fairyland, Eileen, The Pod Generation, and Bad Behavior.

This cast is excellent, with Hewson’s Flora standing out above the rest, which is why Carney’s plot works so well. Flora is flawed and is still figuring out who she is, but Hewson manages to make her likeable even when she is at her worst. We support her every step of the way, despite the fact that she enjoys partying, steals, yells at her son, and tries to seduce Ian again. The fact that Gordon-Levitt can be as real as he wants to be and have it work for him is another fantastic thing about seeing him in a role that plays to his strengths.

The songs in Flora and Son must strike a fine balance between sounding decent enough to stick with the audience and sounding like they were written by amateurs. However, the music of Carney and Clark succeeds in achieving that particular blend. The best scene in the movie is when Flora and Jeff take one of Jeff’s average compositions and gradually improve upon it until it becomes a powerful tune that mixes all the numerous musical genres we’ve seen these individuals experimenting with.

The crowd at my screening of Flora and Son clapped along during the final song, they stayed to hear a second song throughout the credits, and not a single person left the cinema until they had seen every single second of what Carney is doing here. The beauty of what Carney has produced here is a movie that engulfs you in its sweetness and charm to the point that you don’t want to leave. Carney may be using the same techniques that we’ve seen him employ since Once, but Flora and Son demonstrates that he is continually improving as a storyteller and making audience-pleasing movies that are nonetheless difficult and stunning.

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