Writer-director John Carney has made his name with quirky and heart-warming modern musicals. They may not have any big song and dance numbers, and you may get to the end credits without thinking that you've watched a musical, but that's what they are. He knows that great songs, just like great movies, have the power to transport people, to help our emotions soar or plummet, and to boldly underline our lives if they occur at just the right time when we need them.
Flora And Son may be the weakest film yet from Carney, but that's not to say it's a bad film. It's just a testament to how great his other films have been. Eve Hewson plays Flora, a single mother having trouble keeping her young son, Max (Orén Kinlan), on the right path. Max's father, Ian (Jack Reynor), isn't helping, and her latest gift idea, rescuing a guitar that she finds being dumped, doesn't make the impact she hoped it would. Flora decides to use the guitar herself, picking an online tutor named Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Despite Max not seeming at all interested, music does start to form a bridge (no pun intended) between mother and son.
Although all Carney movies feel small in scale, they are about personal joirneys rather than world-altering events, Flora And Son suffers slightly from feeling smaller than usual. The fact that Flora and Jeff communicate throughout most of the movie via a computer screen feels like an easy option for Carney, although there are moments depicting the characters imagining themselves sharing the same space together, and it undercuts the usual sweetness and ultimately uplifting nature of his films by serving as a reminder of the recent pandemic time we all shared together trying to spend time with other people via our phone screens and computers.
Hewson does a very good job in her first role that feels like a full feature lead, although she has been acting in shorts, TV, and movies for well over sa decade now. She's good enough to keep viewers onside for most of the runtime, despite being quite unlikable and conniving at certain times, and watching her develop a better relationship with Gordon-Levitt's character as she develops a better relationship with music, and subsequently a better relationship with her son, is as satisfying as it is predictable. Gordon-Levitt has to look cute and capable of being passionate about music, not much of a stretch for him, and he's perfectly cast here. Kinlan manages to play his moody teen in a way that doesn't make him too unbearable, helped by a script that show how his circumstances/home life have massively affected him, and the natural charm of Reynor allows him to play his douchebag absent parent in a way that is similarly easier to tolerate than he otherwise could have been.
If you like the films of Carney then you will find plenty to like here. He works just as much to a formula as many other film-makers, but a movie formula is much easier to accept and enjoy while it keeps working (just look at the first decade or so of the MCU). While this is slightly more bitter than his previous films, it's still a (kind of) low-key musical that will have you smiling as the end credits roll.
7/10
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