Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | October 9, 2023
For those who associate the personality of Apple TV+ with series like Ted Lasso, Shrinking, Trying, Platonic, Acapulco, and Loot — funny, feel-good, emotionally resonant — Flora and Son will fit right at home in your mind. It’s clear the streamer was looking for another CODA, and while Flora and Son is in the same ballpark, it’s a double instead of CODA’s homerun, a crowd-pleaser that doesn’t go hard enough.
The film comes from John Carney, the writer/director behind the big indie hit Once, the fantastic Netflix film Sing Street, and that Kiera Knightley/Mark Ruffalo one no one remembers. Carney is the equivalent of all those Kens in Barbie playing their acoustic guitars at the various Barbies. He’s a sensitive, soulful, acoustic guitar guy, basically, John Mayer in movie form, and, like John Mayer, these movies played better in 2007.
That doesn’t mean that Flora and Son is not without its charms. Eve Hewson — (Bad Sister, The Knick, my favorite Nepo Baby) — is Flora, the single mother of a moody, sullen asshole of a teenager, Max. Flora has no idea how to connect with her son — and often isn’t even interested in doing so — but she decides to take online guitar lessons anyway as both an attempt to speak Max’s language and prove to her ex-husband, Ian (Jack Reynor, Sing Street, Midsommar) that she can stick with something and maybe even win him back.
On YouTube, Flora finds a Los Angeles-based instructor named Jeff, who Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays in the most Joseph Gordon-Levitt role ever: Sensitive, acoustic-guitar guy! Flora is very blunt, very profane, and very Irish/drunk, and while she is smitten with Jeff, she’s not shy about pointing out his shortcomings as a songwriter. As Flora begins to learn the guitar, she begins collaborating with Jeff on songs. Soon after, she’s also collaborating on music with her son, who is into rap and electronic dance music.
This plays out in predictable, low-stakes but heartwarming ways, like a lesser About a Boy with Hewson in the Hugh Grant role. She is terrific, and when she sings, you can hear a little of her Dad, minus the God complex.
I do take issue with one thing, however: Flora and Son could have been a movie a family with older kids could watch together — like Sing Street or About a Boy — were it not for the one scene in particular that gives it an R-Rating. Flora talks graphically with her ex-husband about a blow job. While I otherwise have no issue with it, it contributes nothing to the film other than to unnecessarily alienate pre-teen audiences who might have appreciated a feel-good, crowd-pleaser about a 14-year-old who connects with his mom over their shared love of music. I like R-rated films when they are improved by language, violence, nudity, or adult situations, but there is no point to this scene whatsoever. Also, all the smoking is weird. It’s 2023! Even in Ireland, they don’t smoke as much as Flora does in this film.
