Faced with a teenage son who commits many misdeeds, a single mother finds her salvation and that of her family in music.
Nothing is going well between Flora (Eve Hewson), a single mother living in Dublin, Ireland, and her son Max (Orén Kinlan): he is one step away from being sent to a youth detention center . Full of compassion, a police officer begs Flora to find Max a hobby that would prevent him from getting back into trouble.
The teen doesn’t care, and his father Ian (Jack Reynor) isn’t much help. Flora nevertheless tries it by recovering a guitar to give to her son, who will not want it. So she decides to give it a try and enrolls in online courses offered by an American (Jeff, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) whom she visibly finds cute.
The discrepancy between the two is obvious: he’s a sensitive person visibly hurt by life and she lacks finishing… But it clicks between them. Flora discovers at the same time that her son is a skilled composer with machines and a lyricist who is not keen on poetry. His thing, however, is rap. Little by little, through music, all these people (even Max’s dad) find a common language and rebuild bonds that had frayed.
There is something very romantic about Flora and Son. As much in the mother’s struggle, played convincingly by Eve Hewson (the daughter of U2 singer Bono), as in her relationship with her guitar teacher living on the other side of the world. Romantic also in this choice of making music to bind these people together.
This blue flower bias lifts this new film from director and screenwriter John Carney much more than it torpedoes it. By assuming it and daring a few scenes that go beyond the realism in which most of the film is set, he gives it breath. Music here is as much a path to others as it is a way of escaping a depressing life in a working-class area of Dublin.
John Carney skilfully sketches this not easy life and his actors all show enough restraint not to seem caricatured, even when their score is thin. Eve Hewson dominates the cast with great naturalness, adding layers of complexity to a character who, at first, can seem crude and depthless.
