FLORA AND SON: The Universal Power of Music with an Irish Heart

I have a soft spot in my heart for John Carney. Obviously Once is such a diamond in the rough. Buoyed by the unassuming chemistry of its stars and the sleeper success of “Falling Slowly,” it put the Irishman on the map. To this day, it stands as a testament to all the very best of what he had to offer as a filmmaker.

Sing Street in particular was a personal favorite of mine because it was one of the first films I ever got to cover as something more than a fan. Even to this day, it remains special.

Carney is not quick to churn out content, and I appreciate creators who, barring the necessity of maintaining their livelihood, take time to gestate and develop their ideas. There are also some familiar faces for the Sing Street aficionados in the audience including Don Wycherley and Jack Reynor.

The former is a local member of the Irish gardai who tells Flora (Eve Hewson) that her delinquent son Max (Orén Kinlan) has one last chance before he faces more serious consequences. He needs to find a hobby to keep him out of trouble.

Reynor is a washed-up musician and Max’s deadbeat father whose one claim to fame was having a band with a momentary association with Snow Patrol (If you only vaguely remember Snow Patrol, then that gets the point across).

But lest there be any doubt, Flora and Son is really a mother-and-son narrative rife with a myriad of conflicting emotions. Hewson kills it, and it’s not because of her family pedigree (her parents are Bono and Ali Hewson), though this adds an intriguing meta quality. In one early scene, she confesses to a friend, “This can’t be my narrative!” Living in a shoebox, with a kid who hates her, and his dad who won’t see her anymore.

She makes ends meet by babysitting and doing odd jobs; on one such occasion, she passes a discarded guitar in a dumpster. For whatever reason — maybe her son, or maybe for herself — she rescues the guitar and decides to get it refurbished. She might have naïve ambitions of wooing a lad with love songs, but it is the start of her journey. She’s altering her narrative by taking action like all compelling characters do.

James Blunt, Tom Waits, and Joni Mitchell

With Flora and Son, Carney is venturing toward more trendy mainstream territory again in the vein of Begin Again, and yet by staying within his most comfortable milieu, I think it pays heavy dividends towards the final product. It slots just under my favorite Carney films while still maintaining all the creative heart and spirit I’ve admired in his work from the very beginning.

Flora decides to pore over the interwebs to find a teacher suitable to give her guitar lessons. Finally, she settles on Jack (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) an American who offers remote lessons for $20! (Those were the days).

When they jump on Zoom together, she’s straightforward and a bit flirty when she has some wine in her, which is most of the time. She also does little to hide her love for James Blunt‘s “Beautiful.”

Jack is easygoing, but he has a high view of songs and their cultural and personal significance beyond throwaway utility; he seems like a bit of a music snob when he waxes poetic. Still, he’s easy to like thanks to Levitt.

She’s quick to derail their lessons to pry and ask questions, and he happily obliges. In one particular moment, he dismisses catchy pop songs and plays “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love With You.” For Flora, it’s disarming and beautiful.

She doesn’t realize this is a timeless entry from Tom Waits. Jack wishes he could write something transcendent like this instead of quaint ballads about Topanga in L.A. where he lives.

One night her homework is to listen to Joni Mitchell, and I cannot think of a more pleasant assignment. Snobs might say that Carney could have used a deeper cut — Flora listens to “Both Sides Now” showcased most recently in CODA — but it’s a brilliant place to start. I could not help thinking Mitchell herself wrote some wonderful tunes evoking the West Coast like “California” and “Ladies of The Canyon.”

Beyond the cursory comparison to CODA, a film about a fractured family and the power of music, Flora and Son plays as a fine companion piece to the Nick Offerman-led Indie Hearts Beat Loud. It was a music-oriented, father-daughter story that shares some of the same themes and iconography.

In Carney‘s film, there are the vulgarities of the everyday, working-class life we come to tolerate because they belie a core story about parental bonding imbued with immense pathos. As an audience, we are uplifted by these moments where a mother and son are able to reconcile and find a way to thrive in the midst of brokenness.

Max is sent to a month of reform school for stealing a synth he wanted for his creative endeavors. It could be more of the same — the continuation of a destructive cycle — but Flora takes a stand and sets him up for success when he gets out.

She also considers visiting Jack in L.A. so they can play the song they’ve written together, and it’s hard not to intuit the romantic subtext. For the time, however, she puts it on the back burner so she can be present for her son.

Flora is the definition of a flawed individual, a flawed parent, and yet for any mistakes she must own up to, she simultaneously shows herself to be steadfast and intent on nurturing her relationship with Max.

Conclusion: Flora and Son

Using Zoom as an intermediary has the quality of planting the movie in the pandemic era. I’m not sure how I feel about this exactly. Aside from the screens-on-screens aesthetic, I think I’m still one of those peons trying to come to terms with those dark years.

It’s not exactly timeless and like the phone splitter in Begin Again, it chooses a very specific moment in time. Regardless of your thoughts on this, it has the winsome heart and the deep, abiding love of music that’s never in question.

They perform a show at the local pub as a tenuous family stitched back together for one night only with Jack joining them courtesy of a laptop. The finale is not so much climactic as it is twee and heartfelt. You feel good about these people’s lives without getting stuck on what the future will look like (We don’t know for sure if or when Flora will get to visit L.A.). Perhaps it’s not important.

Instead, I was trying to figure out the ending as we swoop out of the pub, onto the street, past the many pedestrians walking by, and in some small way, I felt like we were getting a callback to Carney’s roots with Once. I practically expected to see Glen Hansard busking out there on the sidewalk.

John Carney has come so far since that unassuming success. The quality at his disposal has risen, and some of his output has been hit-and-miss, but I still can’t wait until his next film comes out.

Those last few shots reminded me why this is. His films are at their best at their most personal and localized. I appreciate being a part of the world he depicts in Dublin because it’s so different from my experience. It’s a time-tested example of how the specific somehow manages to conjure up the most universal aspects of our shared humanity.

Flora and Son will premiere on Apple TV+ on September 29, 2023.

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