FLORA & SON

John Carneys films have always been interested in the connections that music can make between people. In Once it was a connection between two lonely musicians. In Sing Street - one of my all time favourite films - the connection between Brothers. Begin again, reconnecting with yourself.

In Flora & Son, as the name might suggest, John Carney focuses his attention on the connection between a mother, Flora (Eve Hewson) and her son, Max (Orén Kinlan).

The two, as we meet them in their cramped Dublin flat, have a somewhat fractious relationship. Her, still carrying regret at the life she lost when having a child at 17, and him angry at the hand life has dealt him, and rebelling through a series of thefts that bring the Gardaí to their door.

Encouraged to find him a hobby Flora liberates an old guitar from a skip, takes it to a repair shop, and attempts to gift it to her son as a birthday present.

A gift which is, almost literally, thrown back into her face.

Deciding to make a point to her son, and perhaps her ex - former boyband star, and Max’s father Ian (Jack Reynor) - she picks up the guitar herself and, after watching numerous excruciating YouTube tutorial videos, stumbles upon a video from Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) offering guitar lessons over Zoom.

While Flora & Son is definitely, from the writer-directors point of view about the maternal relationship, for me the real heart of the film comes during these chats. The blossoming friendship between the two. The increased confidence that she gets from him, and perspective he gets from her.

Flora & Son is, as we have come to expect from John Carney a musical, and there are a whole host of original songs here. Meet in the Middle is the standout - and possibly the only really memorable - one of them here. One of Jeff’s original songs, he is coaxed by Flora into playing it during on off her lessons. At the end she frowns, and challenged by Jeff replies that “It’s good… But would I want to listen to it again?”.

The woman whose favourite song, much to Jeff's chagrin, is You’re Beautiful by James Blunt is unimpressed.

But she goes away and works on it, writing her own verses, creating her own duets and harmonies, and when, during a wifi confounding rooftop lesson, she convinces Jeff to play the song again, with her parts included, it creates what is easily the best part of Flora & Son.

As they sing, in a simple, but lovely piece of filmmaking, the camera pans away from the laptop, and Jeff and Flora are together. For the duration of this song they are no longer isolated from each other by the screen. No longer 5,000 miles apart. But together.

Connected.

It is a wonderful, powerful moment between two actors that have incredible chemistry, even when constricted by the limitations of zoom calls. 

Her lyrics may be rough, but it gives Jeff’s decent but forgettable song the slight edge that it needed.

Collaboration is another area that John Carney touches upon a lot in his work, most effectively in the brilliant A Step You Can’t Take Back scene from Begin Again, which I wrote about here.

In Flora & Son it is used to show a softening in Flora. A moment where she isn’t fighting against the world, but instead allowing a small amount of the world in. Allowing a small part of her to be vulnerable in a way that, as a single mother struggling just above the poverty line, she has had to guard herself against.

It is a softening, alongside he trademark fight, that will eventually lead to her forming better a stronger relationship with her son. 

As he begins to create his own music, and develop feelings for a local girl on the estate, Flora is able to encourage him in both endeavours.

It is difficult to write more about that without going more into spoiler territory than I already am, but the slow rebuilding of this mother and son relationship is expertly pitched by a director who intrinsically understands these bonds, just as much as he understands the music that helps create and maintain them.

While the music that Flora and Jeff create is more on the acoustic folk-pop side, Max’s lands more squarely in the rap and grime genres. Genres which I know very little about, and listen to even less, and I think this is where my largest disconnect with the film was.

Where with Carneys previous films I have enjoyed the songs all the way through, some of the music here was jarring to me, and pulled me a little out of the film. 

And I appreciate that this is an issue with me, and not the film or the music; Musical films live and die on how well the audience connects with the songs. But unfortunately, for me, a lot of the music did not click, and this did, ultimately impact my enjoyment and immersion, with Flora & Son.

And the characters themselves, for a film so intrinsically about connection, I did find more difficult to connect with than in Carneys previous films. They felt, at times, a little too broadly drawn. Perhaps not in comparison with the majority of the film industries output, but certainly in comparison the this directors other work.

And so, to paraphrase the film itself, Flora & Son is good… but would I want to watch it again? Unfortunately not. Where John Carneys previous films have been eminently rewatchable, this feels more to me like a one watch and out. 

There is a huge amount of good here, and where Flora & Son works, it really works for me. I just found it slightly harder to connect with than I have done with John Carneys previous work. 

Worth a watch? Absolutely. Worth repeat viewing? Watch Once instead. Or Begin Again… or Sing Street.