'Flora and Son' is an OK movie with a great performance
Apple TV+
It is a bit amusing for a filmmaker to break out with a music-based love story called “Once” and then continue with movies that often beg to be called “Twice” or “Three Times a Lady.” (That’s not what you thought I’d say, but you can’t make a movie about music and call it Thrice.) To be clear, this is not a problem; “Begin Again” and “Sing Street” were both perfectly enjoyable tales, even if they didn’t capture the heartache and electricity of “Once.” Now, with “Flora and Son,” writer-director John Carney at last takes a major detour with this Texas-based crime thriller—
Nah, it’s a movie set in Ireland about music, relationships and family. And it’s decent.
Flora’s (Eve Hewson, daughter of Bono) days consist of helping other moms with their kids and desperately needing assistance with hers, the brooding, periodically arrested, 14-year-old Max (Oren Kinlan). That is, until Flora finds a guitar in the garbage, Max rejects the arguably half-hearted and objectively belated birthday gift, and Flora decides to start taking virtual guitar lessons from an ordinary dude in L.A. named Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). This despite the general difficulty that came from her previous marriage to and current frustration with Max’s father (Jack Reynor), a failed musician who now specializes in not much of anything.
The story here is rather sing-by-numbers, for Carney or anybody, when it comes to the connective power of music between parents and kids, strangers-turned-maybe-more, or just a performer and a crowd. “Flora and Son” also doesn’t feel especially informed about music (James Blunt as an example of lameness and Joni Mitchell as representative for quality, really?), paling in comparison to the vastly underrated “We Are Your Friends” and the somewhat similar “Hearts Beat Loud.” If there’s something insightful here about any of the topics at hand, I guess I missed it, and Jeff’s too bland — which is part the character, part Gordon-Levitt’s performance — for any romantic sparks to make it off the computer screen.
But Hewson (“Robin Hood”) is so terrific that she holds the movie together until delivering the sort of great song that can make a weak album or a so-so movie feel worthwhile. Nobody will leave “Flora and Son” talking much about music or family or concerts or love. But they’ll be raving about the star and humming, and that’ll do.
B-
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