Flora and Son

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 Carneys latest feature tells the story of Flora (Eve Hewson), a Dublin working class single mom with questionable values whos 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 into a mass of schmaltzy harmony, a somewhat implausible scenario given the patently unlikable and irresponsible nature of its central characters. The mean...

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 him as a belated birthday gift. He's not remotely interested so she decides to try her hand and eventually alights on the less geeky, dashing, "Jeff" (...

Writer / director John Carney is the master of making crowd-pleasing films for music lovers, and his latest wont 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 thats 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 finds a used guitar thats been thrown away like garbage, Flora salvages it and gifts it to Max. At first its shunned, but then Flora begins taking online guitar l...