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Sep 27, 2023

‘Flora and Son’ Trailer: See the Year’s Most Heartwarming Musical Film

By Marlow Stern Each year at Sundance, there’s one film that warms audience’s hearts so much they leap out of their seats when the credits roll and shower it with thunderous applause. Flora and Son,

By Marlow Stern

Each year at Sundance, there’s one film that warms audience’s hearts so much they leap out of their seats when the credits roll and shower it with thunderous applause. Flora and Son, however, holds the distinction of inspiring not just a lengthy standing ovation but also a group sing-along, with the entire crowd clapping to the beat.

Written and directed by John Carney, who helmed the crowd-pleasing musical films Once and Sing Street, the Irish filmmaker’s latest tells the story of Flora (Eve Hewson), a scrappy single mother who spends her nights shagging losers at the club and her days nannying and raising her teenage son, Max (Orén Kinlan), who appears to despise her, and dodging her crummy ex (Jack Reynor). She’s lost — she had Max when she was 17 — so, in a desperate attempt to connect with him and take her mind off things, she comes upon an old acoustic guitar, pays $20 an hour for Zoom guitar lessons with a washed-up L.A. musician, Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and learns that music is the best cure.

“I had thought of the film before the pandemic, and then during it I thought of what it would be like to pick up a new instrument and learn it,” Carney tells Rolling Stone. “I was thinking, God, it would be a blessing to find something that got you through that.”

Riding a wave of buzz, Flora and Son was purchased for $20 million by Apple TV+ out of Sundance — the same distributors that acquired the Best Picture-winning Coda out of the indie fest. Like that left-field hit, Flora and Son is a feel-good film anchored by an extraordinary, star-making turn, this time from Eve Hewson (daughter of Bono).

“I’d met Eve when she was a young kid a couple of times, and her name came up for this and I was like, ‘OK. She’s brilliant but is she Flora?’” recalls Carney. “Because I had seen Bad Sisters and a couple of things where she looked very refined. This is a Dubliner who’s salty, spicy, and tough. I Zoomed with Eve, and within a half an hour we were like, ‘We have to make this film together.’”

Carney initially thought Gordon-Levitt was too posh for the role of a struggling musician, but the actor wrote him a letter about how he’s “missing something” that would make the movie really sing. Carney was sold. As far as the filmmaker’s penchant for heartwarming musical films are concerned, well, Carney knows his strengths.

“In lieu of being the guy moving people in a deep, dark way, I feel I can move them with music — being uplifting and showing you the places that music can take you,” he says. “You forget how powerful music is, and what an injection of love and life it is.”

Watch the trailer for Flora and Son here at Rolling Stone: