‘Flora and Son’: A Wonderful Surprise From Director John Carney [Review]

I’m pleased to report that John Carney has maybe made his best film with “Flora and Son”. There’s barely any manipulative emotions in this one, it’s just this beautifully rendered homage to motherhood and music.

Carney is the writer-director behind “Once” and “Sing Street,” so you know what you’re getting yourself into when you watch one of his films. Carney specializes in musical dramas, but this one has some realism and working-class plight to it.

In “Flora and Son,” Carney took the risk of casting Bono’s daughter in the lead role. Her name is Eva Hewson and she’s wonderful as a struggling young mom who takes guitar lessons to escape. There’s also a bit less music in this one, which lets the characters breathe a bit more.

Carney has this wonderful instinct of finding the best off-beat musicians and using their talents to center his stories around them. Hewson is charming as the Dublin-based single mother with a troubled 14-year-old son and a lazy ex-husband. Oren Kinlan plays the kid, and he keeps it real, and authentic, in a role that could have easily deviated into maudlin. Although surrounded by music, the film works best when it tackles the relationship dynamics between mother and son.

Flora, a cursing chain-smoker, decides to pick up an acoustic guitar out of someone’s trash, have it restrung, and offers it to her son. She figures he needs the distraction from his otherwise street-hopping troublemaking. He rejects it, so she figures that she’ll just take lessons herself.

Enter Jeff, a struggling songwriter (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who gives online lessons for 20 bucks a pop. Jeff’s self-effacingly charming nature wins her over. Flora and Jeff communicate solely via FaceTime from L.A. to Dublin. The two immediately begin flirting, and working on an original song they are writing together.

Gordon-Levitt, as usual, gives another good performance as Jeff, despite mostly acting out his scenes on FaceTime. However, this is Hewson’s show, carrying the film on her shoulders. She brightens every frame in this endearing film.

“Flora and Son,” which premiered at Sundance in January and was quickly snatched up by Apple for $20 million, is not any kind of original statement, but is a thoroughly well-made crowd pleaser through and through. It debuts in select theaters on September 22 before hitting Apple TV+ on September 29. [B+]