On demand: "Flora and Son"

Flora and Son is by far the smallest and most self-contained of Irish writer-director John Carney's hit parade of Movies About Music: local-to-domestic in its scope, it's been briskly cut (by Stephen O'Connell) to a mere 97 minutes, and is throughout dependent on thespian Zoom interaction that makes one wonder whether this wasn't a Covid production that got delayed on its way to premiering on Apple TV+. At any rate, the old song about music providing a road to self-realisation is here offered a distinctively profane cover. Abrasive Dublin single mum Flora (Eve Hewson) rescues a guitar abandoned in a skip as a potential gift for her loafing son Max (Orén Kinlan); but after the lad throws the instrument back in her face, preferring to trade in Kneecap-style rap beats, she picks it up herself, taking online lessons from laidback Californian Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) that initiate another of Carney's variations on the musical theme. 2007's beloved Once found its music on the streets; 2013's Begin Again drew us into the machinations of the industry; 2016's Sing Street compiled the scrappy sounds of the schoolyard. Flora and Son means to dramatise the digital revolution of the past decade-and-a-half: songs written via transoceanic fibre-optic cable or on a laptop with GarageBand installed, promotional videos made on your phone for peanuts and uploaded to the Internet to go viral overnight.

As with most of Carney's projects, it's not a little predictable in its overall trajectory, but this filmmaker remains alert to the pleasures of performance; scene by scene, he gets different, often surprising notes out of his actors. The one genuinely risky aspect is the script's less than subtle conception of a working-class mother, sexing it up wherever she goes, but Hewson - who's been there or thereabouts for a while now, at all turns overshadowed by her illustrious lineage - has never quite managed to seize the screen as forcefully as she does here. Although Flora's relationship with her lad is somewhat erratically drawn, vacillating between aggrieved slaps and giggles at the kid's bumfluff moustache, she builds an increasingly cherishable rapport with Kinlan, and even scores in the quieter moments, as when Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" adds a touch of soul to doing the washing-up. Jack Reynor, as Flora's bristling babydaddy, benefits from Carney's enduring fondness for characters who might simply be written off elsewhere as antagonistic plot motors; and Gordon-Levitt clearly enjoys the opportunity to do something more lived-in than usual, as well as show off his fretwork. He's as close as Flora and Son gets to the starry or showy, never more so than when - thanks to movie magic - Jeff appears, all rugged, sunkissed charisma, alongside Flora at her kitchen table. Otherwise, we're watching a director operating comfortably within his wheelyard: one reference to the recent A Star is Born redo only points up how shruggingly unambitious this is in comparison. Pleasant, often funny entertainment, all the same: easy listening, easy directing, easy viewing.

Flora and Son is now streaming via Apple TV+.