'Flora and Son' review: Eve Hewson delights in John Carney's latest gem

Sep. 26—John Carney knows a thing or three about making a charming film with music as its backbone.

The writer-director of "Once" (2007), "Begin Again" (2013) and the especially wonderful "Sing Street" (2016), Carney is back with "Flora and Son," a consistently enjoyable music-infused, character-driven comedy set in his native Dublin.

Already in a limited theatrical release, "Flora and Son" debuts this week on Apple TV+ this week.

Raising rebellious teen son Max (Orén Kinlan) is a constant struggle for Flora (Eve Hewson), who has split from her bassist ex, Ian ("Sing Street" alum Jack Reynor), and scrapes together a living as a caretaker for wealthy children. Max constantly gets into trouble, which has landed him in a law-enforcement program working to channel his energies in a more positive direction in the hope of keeping him out of a juvenile correctional facility.

When a neighborhood cop suggests Max join a cycling club, Flora informs him Max sold it for a second-hand laptop to play video games.

"That's not all I do on it," he says.

"Oh?" says the cop.

"I watch pornography on it, too," he says proudly.

Flora puts a hand over her face and falls back on the couch.

Hey, she's a little rough around the edges herself, using plenty of foul language and hooking up with a guy at a club after initially rejecting his lewd suggestion.

But she wants to reach Max and hopes she's found a way when she nabs a tossed-away guitar, getting it fixed up at a nearby shop. He wants nothing to do with it, though — a fact he makes very clear in his oh-so-ungrateful way — and she decides she'll learn to play it instead.

She scours YouTube for instructional videos, ultimately choosing to take video lessons from one such teacher, Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who lives in Los Angeles. She chose him because she finds him soothing, she says, and soon asks him to play her a song over again without his shirt. He ends the lesson.

However, he gives her another chance after she promises to take things more seriously — although she also offers him a revealing pic of herself as a peace offering — and the two begin to develop a rapport while she does learn to play a bit.

Meanwhile, Flora finds that Max has become interested in music — music he can make via a computer, not a guitar. She quickly latches on to this, encouraging him and seeking to collaborate with him.

But will this prove to be the key to putting him on a better path?

"Flora and Son" is the kind of movie that makes a reviewer jot down a bunch of lines, a few exchanges, a couple of wonderful moments that he ultimately decides not to share, leaving them for the viewer to experience purely.

Almost all of them involve, in one way or another, Flora, so delightfully inhabited by Hewson ("The Knick," "Bad Sisters"), also a Dublin native and the daughter of U2 frontman Bono. (Not exactly a shock to know she can sing, is it?) In her hands, Flora is imperfect in mostly lovely ways.

The character is so compelling, in fact, that the movie probably should be titled simply "Flora." Its most noticeable flaw is the underdevelopment of Max and his dynamic with his mother. Sure, we have an idea as to what motivates him to make music — he's a teen male, after all, so it's a girl — but when it comes to the evolution of his relationship with Flora, it seems Carney has chosen the less-is-more approach. Perhaps a few scenes left on the cutting room floor will surface later.

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As for the little-known Kinlan, he had no musical experience prior to performing in this first major role, so he took singing lessons — Max mainly raps — and learned to use the computer application GarageBand prior to filming. He manages to make Max at least a little endearing despite hefty servings of attitude and abrasiveness.

Longtime guitar player Gordon-Levitt ("The Trial of the Chicago 7," "The Dark Knight Rises") brings an easy-going nature to Jeff, even if the character doesn't have life quite as figured out as it first may seem.

The scenes he shares with Hewson are key to "Flora and Son" being as engaging as it is. They were shot in adjacent rooms in Dublin, according to the film's production notes, but Carney ultimately puts Flora and Jeff in the same space via their imagination. It all just works.

The movie's original songs, co-written by Carney and composer Gary Glark, with whom he also collaborated on "Sing Street," aren't the movie's greatest selling points, but the obligatory climactic number is sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

In his attempts to expose her to a grander world of music than the one she knows, Jeff instructs Flora to listen to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now," That makes "Flora and Son" the second movie Apple has acquired after its debut at the Sundance Film Festival to use the beautiful song in a big way, following 2021's "CODA."

That film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. And while it's hard to see "Flora and Son" achieving quite that same level of success, it's a little gem all the same.

'Flora and Son'

Where: Apple TV+.

When: Sept. 29.

Rated: R for language throughout, sexual references and brief drug use.

Runtime: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

Stars (of four): 3.