Taglines: Sing your own song.
Fresh out of jail after one year imprisoned for narcotics possession, Rose-Lynn Harlan is a 23 years-old working-class girl from Glasgow, Scotland, who tries to rectify her chaotic life: foul-mouthed, streetwise, rebellious and free-spirited, Rose-Lynn reunites with her children, older Wynonna and younger Lyle, cared for during her imprisonment by their grandmother Marion, who openly despises her daughter’s lifestyle.
A worker in the bakery of a shopping center for twenty years, Marion struggles to understand her daughter, who becomes determined to travel Nashville, Tennesse (country music’s cradle) to become a famous country singer. Due to a lack of resources and her poor academic studies, Rose-Lynn tries to return to her former job as a singer in the country bar Grand Ole Opry, having been fired by owners Jackie and Alan after they learn about her conviction.
Thanks to Marion’s good name, Rose-Lynn gets a job as a cleaning lady in the house of Susannah, an upper-class woman married to James, and mother of little children Rory and Nell. Blessed with talent, charisma, cheek, and a powerful voice, one day Rose-Lynn is discovered singing in her daily work by Susannah, who befriends Rose-Lynn and decides to help her to travel to Nashville by throwing a fund-raising party especially for her.
Therefore, troubles are around the corner: Wynonna and Lyle are time and time again neglected by a mother unable to reconcile with them who hides their existence to Susannah, James mistrusts Rose-Lynn by the way that Susannah is interested in her, and Marion sends an ultimatum forcing her to make a choice between her dream to be singer, or her reality to be mother. Troubled, auto-destructive and badly influenced by her friend and occasional lover Elliot (a fan of alcohol, night and wild partying), Rose-Lynn finds herself trapped in a crossroads struggling against her worst enemy: herself.
Wild Rose is a 2018 British musical drama film directed by Tom Harper and starring Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters, Sophie Okonedo, Jamie Sives, Craig Parkinson, James Harkness, Janey Godley, Daisy Littlefeld, Ryan Kerr, Adam Mitchell, and Nicole Kerr. The screenplay was written by Nicole Taylor. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2018 and was released on 12 April 2019, by Entertainment One in the United Kingdom. The film received positive reviews, with Buckley earning a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role nomination for her performance.
Film Review for Wild Rose
Great country songs are often made from the most basic musical elements — a few chords, a hummable melody and chorus, maybe a key change — but somehow those humble components can be worked into something transcendent with the alchemical addition of skillful playing, energetic showmanship, ace songwriting and sincerity.
Fittingly, the British comedy-drama Wild Rose pulls off the same kind of trick as a movie. It posits a classic setup — a young rebel (in this case a young Glaswegian woman fresh out of prison, played by the incandescent Jessie Buckley) with a raw streak of talent (singing country music) and then tests how badly she wants to succeed (will she leave her young children for a chance to go to Nashville?).
Out of these familiar, predictable elements director Tom Harper and screenwriter Nicole Taylor have fashioned something entirely delightful, fresh as a Scottish summer evening. The film stays in “key,” to extend the musical metaphor, with a narrational circle of fifths that creates certain emotional lows and highs and hits them accordingly, but even that mild predictability makes it more lovable, and catchy as a burr on a long-haired dog. Certain to win hearts in its home market and acquired by Neon at Toronto, this could represent a breakout, toe-tapping hit.
Sent to the big house for a year for throwing a bag of heroin over a fence at another prison, 23-year-old Rose-Lynn Harlan (Buckley) is reissued with her fringed white leather jacket and matching cowboy boots, and freed on parole, albeit with an anklet that enforces curfew every night. After a quick stop en route for some al fresco sex with her beau Elliot (James Harkness), Rose-Lynn arrives at her mother’s house in Priesthill, a working-class area on Glasgow’s south side that’s certainly seldom used as film location.
Her mother Marion (Julie Walters, allowed a rare chance to show off her strong and considerable dramatic range), a bakery employee, has been looking after Rose-Lynn’s two under-10 kids while she’s been away. The children are suspicious and shy of the prodigal mother, who doesn’t seem to know quite how to connect with them. In any case, Rose-Lynn is more worked up about getting back her old gig singing with a band at a local country music club, but with her abrasive interpersonal skills, the court-ordered ankle bracelet and her tendency to throw right hooks, nix that.
Marion suggests Lynn-Anne take over an arthritis-ridden friend’s job as a daily housekeeper for Susannah (Sophie Okonedo), a cheery, bohemian English transplant who’s married to a self-made Scotsman (Jamie Sives), has two sweet young children of her own, a house big enough that a housekeeper is required and plenty of time on her hands. After hearing Rose-Lynn singing while working (a charming dreamlike sequence where the backing band are stationed around the mansion’s rooms while Rose-Lynn cleans), the children and Susannah become her newest, most passionate fans.
Putting a smart twist on what viewers, especially British ones, might expect when it comes to cross-class relations, Rose-Lynn and Susannah become genuine friends. Susannah has edges and a mild case of self-absorption, but she’s a very rare example of a middle-class character in a British film dominated by working-class people who is not a villain, a snob or a stereotyped twit.
Certainly, the fact that she’s played by Okonedo enhances her likability, and the actor’s mixed race (never remarked on once by the other characters) perhaps changes the complex algebra of class at play here. But as the film goes on, it becomes clear that it’s about, among other things, non-sexual relationships between women. Rose-Lynn’s occasional trysts with Elliot seem to mean almost nothing to her. It’s her friendship with Susannah and tempestuous relationship with her mother that drive the plot forward. If you apply the Bechdel test, this is a film that passes with flying colors.
Nevertheless, above all else, thematically the story is about good old-fashioned self-discovery, a lost lamb finding herself, but once again the journey doesn’t zig and zag exactly how you’d expect. She must find herself morally but also musically, and the two objectives are almost the same thing. While imbued with deep respect for country music and its history (the soundtrack, curated by composer-supervisor Jack Arnold, is a cracker), Wild Rose is tuned into the contradictions of a Glaswegian wanting to break into country, a music that’s very much about place and cultural identity.
Thoughtful as these extra dimensions are, and enhancements to what is a refreshingly subtle work, most people won’t absorb them consciously because they’ll be too dazzled by Buckley making a blazing bid for big-time fame. She had already caught some attention with her mesmeric, nuanced performances in Beast last year, and on the recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace that Harper directed. Irish viewers will remember her as a girl from Kerry who came second in a TV singing contest. As a musician, she’s terrific, but as an actress she’s even better, with ceaselessly mobile features like a changeable Northern sky.
Wild Rose (2019)
Directed by: Tom Harper
Starring: Julie Walters, Jessie Buckley, Sophie Okonedo, Craig Parkinson, Jamie Sives, Tracy Wiles, Gemma McElhinney, Ashley Shelton, Blair Kincaid, James Harkness, Sondra Morton
Screenplay by: Nicole Taylor
Production Design by: Lucy Spink
Cinematography by: George Steel
Film Editing by: Mark Eckersley
Costume Design by: Anna Robbins
Set Decoration by: Sheila B., Sheila Bartlett
Art Direction by: Polly Stevens
Music by: Jack Arnold
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, some sexuality and brief drug material.
Distributed by: Neon
Release Date: May 10, 2019
Visits: 54
