John Carney on Flora and Son: 'Say yes to that filthy guitar in a skip'
The Irish director follows up Once and Sing Street with another musical drama.
Following the success of Once and Sing Street, Irish director John Carney hits the right note yet again with his new musical drama Flora and Son.
The film follows single mother Flora, who – determined to keep her rebellious son Max out of trouble – rescues an old guitar from a skip in the hope he will find a new hobby.
When he tells her he doesn't want the instrument, Flora decides to take guitar lessons herself and seeks instruction from a washed-up LA musician over Zoom.
According to Carney, the central theme of the movie is that music is a life-changing gift we often don’t know we're being given – and this manifested in his mind as the image of a beat-up guitar in a skip crying out to be rescued.
"I’m a real believer in that," he told RadioTimes.com in an exclusive interview. "Say yes to that filthy, dirty old guitar in a skip - don’t walk past it, there’s something there.
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"Not that the universe is telling you s**t, but more just the fun of being alive is to look at these little small details that we look over all the time, and look at them as signs and take them."
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In some cases, musical dramas can be lighthearted to the point they lose all sense of reality, but inspired by the French New Wave and the films of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, Carney aims for a gritty sense of realism with his projects.
"I like the feeling that the actors are creating a tone that is supposed to reflect reality," he explained. "You are getting quite a conventional musical story with Flora and Son, but it is done like a kitchen sink drama."
He added: "I don’t know if people want to sit through that heightened reality version in a Hollywood sense, but they do want to feel like they can see their own lives in this musical."
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With his tone established, all that Carney needed was a Flora to bring this movie to life.
He was introduced to Bad Sisters star Eve Hewson (daughter of Bono) and found her charming, but questioned whether she was really what he was looking for in the character. Yet after just one Zoom call, she had changed his mind.
"She somehow made me feel that if I didn’t go with her then there would be something I would be missing," said Carney.
"I might get closer to the character that I had written or I might get a darker or more truthful performance or someone that could sing like crazy… but I wouldn’t get what she had.”
He added: "That’s really all that’s happening when casting or connecting with people; it’s not about winning it, it’s about missing the thing that this person brings."
Hewson created a great impression with Carney because she saw it as a comic role with heart, as opposed to a sentimental role with a few jokes.
"That was music to my ears, because that’s where I come from. I’ll go to the darkest thing or gathering and look for the humour in it - not in a mischievous way, but it will get me through, this type of gallows humor," said Carney.
One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is when the guitar teacher, Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), attempts to inspire Flora by sending her a video of Joni Mitchell performing Both Sides Now.
Talking about his decision to include this song, Carney said: "It’s very rare that you see somebody nowadays let the song take over. Even though Joni Mitchell looks great, wearing a lovely dress, somehow it’s not about her, and I don’t know how she makes it not about her."
He added: "Prince did that. Prince made it about the song, but also put on an incredible show and also made it about himself.
"I think a lot of modern artists are misconstruing that and seeing Prince and thinking it’s about the show. Maybe if you have Prince's songs... but if you don’t have the songs, then showing off and all the pyrotechnics are meaningless."
The fractured relationship between a mother and her son is exemplified in the film by the very different musical styles they are interested in: where Flora plays the acoustic guitar, taught by a songwriter from LA, Max is more taken with dance music and rap.
And Carney explained that, to maintain naturalism and realism, he wanted to create a plausible sound from these different musical elements.
"Can we make something nice out of that?" he said. "Not something so nice that they’ve suddenly made the best song in the world, but I didn’t want to make it realistic and awful. I did want them to make something nice but it had to be plausible."
And speaking about the film's climactic scene – which takes place in a pub – he added: "I just want you to believe that moment and to feel good about it. I want the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up a little bit."
Flora & Son is now showing in select UK cinemas and will be available on Apple TV+ from Friday 29th September. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on tonight.
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