They say the era of movie stars is fading. If so, there are many reasons for that, but it's funny how movie stardom works. It may be fading...until you see someone who has star quality coming out of it. Suddenly, his stardom seems more than a hope, it feels inevitable. That's what I think of Eve Hewson after seeing her in "Flora and Son," the latest Dublin brooding pop-rock bauble from writer-director John Carney ("Once," "Sing Street").
Hewson, from "Bad Sisters," plays the kind of character we've seen many times before: a feisty, dissolute single mom who swims in trouble, most of it of her own making up, like the fact that she's trying to be a responsible. father and a party girl at the same time. Flora from Hewson is a wacky Irish woman with a 14-year-old son (Orén Kinlan) with whom she does nothing but fight, a sexy musician soon to be ex-husband (Jack Reynor) with whom she does nothing but trash, and a taste to the sleazy nights out at the club that usually leave her hooking up with someone she doesn't want to look at in the morning. The movie opens in one of those clubs, and the moment that Hewson's magnetism first indicated to me is when she's dancing with the guy who told her, earlier in the night, "I'll ride you tonight," and she drove away like a mosquito, but now that he's the only prospect left, she looks at him with such brazen, drunken lust that you can't take your eyes off her.
Director: John Carney
Writer: John Carney
Stars: Eve Hewson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Orén Kinlan
Flora, who works as a babysitter, doesn't know her worth and mostly blames the world for her problems. Hewson plays her digging into self-righteousness, making it rude, snappy and funny as hell, but also showing you the wholesome woman under her blinders. Her Flora is furious and tender, sharp and easy to hurt, a careless mess and a whip-smart dynamo. Berating the loser ex of hers, she turns on bawdy temptation, because she wants him to remember what he's missing. But Hewson, who has the eyes of her father (her father is Bono), not to mention the brightest smile of her neighbor's since I don't know who, seems temperamentally disinclined to stay angry for long. There are too many other things in it. In “Flora and Son,” he makes the drama of Flora's mood swings romantic. What does a movie star do?
John Carney, in a sense, has invented his own kind of musical. The form is lo-fi (characters play their own instruments), the situations have the bittersweet melancholy of a good '90s Miramax movie, and the songs fall somewhere on the spectrum between serious indie emo and gritty. nostalgia for Loggins and Messina. If you're the type of person who snarls at a soft rock reference, Carney's movies may not be for you. But they are for many other people (like me) who miss the lilting sincerity of bygone eras of pop. "Flora and Son," which is Carney's first movie in seven years, is the simplest since "Once," and it's also the best since "Eleven." It's catchy and moving, weaving the music into the story with a spontaneity that can leave you giggling with delight, and walking an honest path from despair to belief that is Carney's charmingly sweet calling card.
Trying to make things right with the rude delinquent Max, whom she had when she was 17, Flora pulls a beat-up guitar out of a junk truck, repairs it and attaches a bow to it, and offers it to him as a gift. He couldn't be less interested, but it's not that Max doesn't like music. He just lives in the 21st century, where his idea of being a musician is to carve out dance tracks on his computer, which he's excellent at. They sound like Pet Shop Boys with a white boy rap overlay.
Instead of throwing away the guitar, Flora realizes that she is going to give herself a guitar lesson. Browsing through the endless guitar lesson sites on YouTube, most of which are downright unsexy, she comes across Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a quiet guy with medium-length hair and a beard, sitting in his study in Los Angeles, her window looks out over a sunlit canyon with a eucalyptus breeze. Gordon-Levitt, who seems to be channeling Keanu Reeves and the young Kris Kristofferson, plays it like a relic of the '70s: sweet and hot, with a seductive singer-songwriter chord list. One look at this smiling hippie troubadour and Flora thinks she's in love.
He charges $20 an hour for a Zoom lesson, and the first thing she wants him to teach her is to play James Blunt's "You're Beautiful." But Jeff, who in his own way is a purist rock snob, believes that a great song needs to be less universal and more specific.
Watch Flora and Son 2023 Movie Trailer
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