APPLE TV FILM REVIEW: FLORA AND SON (2023)
Directed by John Carney
Written by John Carney
Produced by: Anthony Bregman, John Carney, Peter Cron, Rebecca O’Flanagan and Robert Walpole.
Main Cast: Eve Hewson, Jack Reynor, Orén Kinlan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Cinematography: John Conroy
Edited by: Stephen O’Connell
John Carney is a brilliant and honest filmmaker who is attracted to outsiders and people with real emotional turmoil. They tend to be at crossroads in their lives and are struggling with their dreams and relationships. He also loves musicians, flaws and all. In Begin Again (2013), a washed-up musical executive, portrayed by Mark Ruffalo, meets unhappy singer-songwriter, Keira Knightley and their first-world romance is played out to bittersweet consequences. Similarly, in Sing Street (2016), a troubled teenager comes of age through his 1980’s pop band and bittersweet romance with a rebellious and equally-troubled schoolgirl. Notice a pattern? Well, this style of music, gritty city backdrops and salty romances were established in Carney’s breakout hit, Once (2007) and are continued in his current underdog musical comedy, Flora and Son (2023).
Flora and Son (2023), believe it or not, is set in Dublin and centres around a single mum, Flora and her delinquent teenage son, Max (Oren Kinlan). Eve Hewson is the foul-mouthed-council-estate-joker, who uses anger and black humour to hide her feelings of insecurity and loss. A mourning for the loss of youth having brought up a child virtually single-handed. Her relationship with Max’s father, Ian (Jack Reynor) is fractured to say the least and they spit sarcastic barbs at each other as shared custodians of disaffected Max. While leaving her cleaning job at a middle-class household, Flora finds a battered guitar in a skip. Attempting to bond with Max, by giving him the guitar, Flora finds herself shunned. She then opens another bottle of wine, picks up the guitar and gives it a crack herself.
Taking online guitar lessons from charming and chilled American musician, Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Flora initially flirts but then knuckles down to learn the plucking instrument. The stakes aren’t particularly high here, but the feelgood acoustic numbers from Carney and co-composer, Gary Clark, certainly breeze along nicely and breath gold onto the screen. Max’s white-rap-Irish-hip-hop tracks are pretty good too and the video he and Flora make is really funny. Thus, you get the theme again from Carney that music helps to connect and heal and provide salvation to the most troubled of human situations. Overall, Flora and Son (2023), is a slight but enjoyable film with enough earthy humour, strumming harmony and kicking beats to please most.
The Cinema Fix presents 