Flora and Son (2023)

The hype swirling around this romantic/creative saga about how the power of love and art can solve virtually any problem has indeed been palpable, but the finished product unfortunately fails to live up to its ambitious billing. Writer-director John Carney’s latest feature tells the story of Flora (Eve Hewson), a Dublin working class single mom with questionable values who’s struggling to raise her (allegedly) rebellious teenage son, Max (Orén Kinlan). But, in doing so, the picture tends to wander amidst an array of diverse story threads, all of which start out dubious but gradually mellow int…

CinemaSerf

7.0

Oct 7, 2023

There's not a great deal of plausibility with this story, but I still really quite enjoyed it. "Flora" (Eve Hewson) has a sort of hate/hate relationship with her pretty wayward fourteen year old lad "Max" (Orén Kinlan) as she struggles to make ends meet while his dad "Ian" (Jack Reynor) has shacked up with his new, pseudo-Spanish, girlfriend. "Max" is a typical unruly kid: into petty theft, a girl who isn't going to look at him twice and "Flora" is at her wits end. Returning from work one afternoon she espies a busted guitar in a skip. €18 after she has tied a ribbon to it and presented it to…

Writer / director John Carney is the master of making crowd-pleasing films for music lovers, and his latest won’t disappoint. “Flora and Son” is a terrific addition to his filmography (“Once,” “Begin Again,” “Sing Street“) and it fits in quite nicely with a simple, tidy story that’s easily accessible to all audiences. Flora (Eve Hewson) is a young, sassy divorced mom to delinquent teen Max (Orén Kinlan), a boy who has been in trouble most of his life. The two live in Dublin in a small flat, and Flora is doing her best to raise her son to have some sort of future success in life. When she fi…