Flora and Son is the best new movie on Apple TV Plus

John Carney performs the hits. Since his breakthrough indie You can also find out more about the following:, which catapulted beloved singer-songwriters Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová to massive fame, Carney has made musical dramas his calling card. Carney, an Irish writer and director, loves films that show people falling in love over song. They also love themselves as well.

You can also read about it here Flora and SonHis new film is a little like a John Carney-cover band. Maybe it’s a really good cover band and I’m fond of it, but it still can’t replicate the creative spark of an artist who’s latched onto something magical.

Maybe that’s harsh, given the genuinely fresh perspective Carney uses to ground Flora and Son. Like its title implies, the film follows Flora (Eve Hewson), a single mom struggling through various odd jobs while raising her teenage son, Max (Orén Kinlan), a morose troublemaker she seems to resent. In an effort to keep him in the authorities’ good graces, she saves a guitar from the dumpster, intending to give it to him. She decides that he will not accept the guitar, so she starts to teach herself.

Flora is caught in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, but she discovers through her guitar lessons, that there’s more to herself than just trying to survive. She also learns that her son has the same talent. Flora and Son excels in its humane yet prickly depiction of Flora’s relationship with motherhood. Flora hates Max because he symbolizes her reckless teenage years when she dated a bad-boy bassist Ian, played by Jack Reynor. Ian is only barely in the picture during their shared custody. Max, of course, knows he’s a burden to his parents, and resents them for it.

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There’s a raw frankness to this relationship that’s never too difficult to watch, thanks to Carney’s caustic sense of humor and Hewson and Kinlan’s deft performances fleshing out their turbulent relationship. Hewson plays Flora with hardscrabble charm — she’s a difficult woman, and motherhood sublimated the self-discovery she envied others for in her 20s. She sees her guitar lessons, as an opportunity to do something worthwhile and to break free from her responsibilities. She realizes Max also wants to make a difference in his life and may have something to share through his music. This is when the warmth of this film begins.

Flora and Son The film is very easy to enjoy and to forgive for its shortcomings. Its dramatic stakes feel disproportionate in a way that makes the whole affair feel a bit wobbly — when real-world misfortune befalls Flora and Max, the film kind of brushes it off. Gordon-Levitt’s performance as Jeff is the right kind of earnest — and purposefully cringe, I’d argue. But Carney’s decision to symbolize their connection by occasionally reframing their long-distance Zoom calls as in-person rendezvous often reads as overly saccharine.

That stylized approach isn’t as cathartic as what Carney does in Sing StreetIn order to create a strong emotional impact, the film often portrays its characters as they would like them to be. In Flora and Son, this bit of visual poetry doesn’t entirely connect to anything, perhaps because the real emotional arc is between Flora and Max.

Carney’s films aren’t particularly challenging to watch — they’re earnest, big-hearted stories that labor to convey what it’s like to find a creative flicker in yourself, nurture it with someone else, and learn with them that some things can only be said with a guitar and a broken heart. The connections his characters make with each other are acts of bravery: It’s hard to be vulnerable enough to make music, or to express your love to someone else. Anyone can do it, but doing it right — in a way that, as Jeff says at one point, inspires a visible change in the person in front of you — that’s something else entirely.

And that’s what makes opening up terrifying, whether it’s through words or music: the fact that you’re just as likely to fall on your face as you are to succeed. But trying is noble. And I’ll keep watching as long as John Carney keeps trying.

Flora and Son Apple TV Plus now offers streaming.