Flora and Son
John Carney’s character study of a dysfunctional Dublin family is full of the director’s distinctive pleasures, as well as a barnstorming turn from Eve Hewson.
Family business: Eve Hewson and Orén Kinlan
Flora doesn’t have much to live for. A little too fond of the booze, and a chain-smoker, she punctuates her meaningless weeks with a string of one-night stands. But at the end of the day, each day, she has to return to her poky little Dublin flat and Max, the delinquent, belligerent boy she calls her son. He doesn’t like her much either, is a recreational thief and is not afraid to call her the C word to her face. Then, on the way back from her stint as a babysitter, she spots a guitar on a skip. On a whim, she clambers onto the pile of rubbish and retrieves the instrument, thinking it could be a positive distraction for Max. She knows he likes music. Indeed, it’s amazing how some people’s garbage can be another person’s salvation. But when she unveils her prize gift to Max, he calls it, and I quote, “a dusty piece of shit.”
Flora and Son never goes where you expect it to, but then it is not the movie you think it is. It is, however, directed by John Carney, who really knows his music. Carney is one of the great under-appreciated directors of his time. His portfolio is criminally thin, but with titles like Once, Begin Again and Sing Street under his belt, you know he is a filmmaker you can trust. Carney’s films sing for the underdog and, through music, he celebrates the lifeforce of the disenchanted. He is not only a terrific writer but he knows how to wring a decent performance out of his players and has landed a peach with Eve Hewson. Like all the characters in the film – that just jump off the screen – her Flora is a sparky, credible presence who is both shameful and affecting, joining that estimable line of cinematic heroines down-on-their-luck yet potentially brilliant, in films from Educating Rita to Wild Rose.
Hewson, whose father is none other than Bono, eats up the screen, dishing out the one-liners with understated comic ease. As the ex she still adores, Jack Reynor is predictably wonderful, while Orén Kinlan (Sunlight) – as the dreaded Max – is astonishingly plausible (didn’t he know there was a camera in the room?). There’s also a charismatic supporting turn from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, while the backdrop of Dublin provides its own gritty mien. But the film’s ace up its sleeve is its theme that we can all survive the hardest of times if we can only find that little extra to ignite our passions, a sentiment that reverberates long after the closing credits.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Eve Hewson, Jack Reynor, Orén Kinlan, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marcella Plunkett, Don Wycherley, Paul Reid, Sophie Vavasseur, Alex Deegan, Melissa Morefield.
Dir John Carney, Pro Anthony Bregman, John Carney, Peter Cron, Rebecca O'Flanagan and Robert Walpole, Screenplay John Carney, Ph John Conroy, Pro Des Ashleigh Jeffers, Ed Stephen O’Connell, Music Gary Clark and John Carney, Costumes Triona Lillis, Sound Dominic Lawrence, Dialect coach William Conacher.
FilmNation Entertainment/Fifth Season/Screen Ireland/Likely Story/Distressed Films/Treasure Entertainment-Apple TV+.
96 mins. Ireland/USA. 2023. US Rel: 22 September 2023. UK Rel: 29 September 2023. Cert. 15.
