Flora and Son is one of those warm hug movies that you let envelope and flow through you, leaving you with a music high and a love for art. It’s in the very familiar pocket of John Carney who keeps making movies with the same themes… and I’m ok with that. Because every once in a while, you need to be reminded of the transcendent beauty of music.

The film stars Eve Hewson as a young single mother of a fourteen year old boy. She brings home a guitar for him but he isn’t interested… so she takes it up herself, eventually connecting with a music instructor in LA (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

Hewson’s character is a beautiful, bold, messy ball of Irish attitude and love. Levitt is very charming himself, playing most of his scenes through an Apple laptop (convenient this is an Apple TV+ movie) and sometimes appearing magically in scenes with her. Because this is just as much a romance as it is a romance about song.

We watch the two of them craft songs, write lyrics, and perform together. We also watch her kid – who is more into electronic dance music – deploy his own skill in the hope of getting the attention of girl in his school. The joy of song creation and collaboration is at the heart of this film as it was in Once, Sing Street, and Begin Again.

The flick wants to have it all and it should have it. A lovely mother/son drama, a connection between two adults, the crafting of love songs and EDM, and the joy and celebration of performance. I’m simply not tired of John Carney going back to the same well when that well has this much heart and this much soul.

Score: 86