Wild Rose: Film Review

Wild Rose: Film Review

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters, Sophie Okonedo
Director: Tom Harper

You've seen Wild Rose before.

Its underdog tale of someone hoping to fulfill a dream against all the odds is not a new one. In fact, it's a cinematic staple, one as inherent in the multiplex as popcorn, phone users and people talking.

And yet, in Jessie Buckley and Julie Walters' hands, this film emerges from the distinct shadow of familiarity to be an emotional piece, that pivots midway through into something that's more about what it takes to get to where you should be.

Buckley is Rose-Lynn, a Glasgow fire-cracker, a love of country music burrowed deep under her ginger bangs and in the white cowboy boots she's never out of. Just released from a 12 month stint in jail, Rose is determined to get to Nashville to realise her dream of becoming a singer.

But there are two things standing in her way - the first is an electronic tag, and the second is her kids, which she feels are holding her back, and who've been thrust upon their grandma (Walters, in fine honest form) during her incarceration.

So, forced into taking a cleaning job with local stay-at-home businesswoman Susanna (Okonedo, benevolent, but underwritten and under-used), Rose-Lynn tries to cope with the reality of life, and the pursuit of a dream...

Wild Rose is a conventional film that veers nicely into non-conventional territory when you're about to write it off.

Anchored by a performance from Buckley that's as honest as it is earnest, Wild Rose overcomes some of its narrative flaws because of its lead. It helps that the well-written rounded take on the cliche is given more of a life thanks to Buckley's mix of vulnerability and hard-as-nails approach, which, to be frank, borders on the selfish, making her a hard case to cheer for.

And yet, in moments between Buckley and Walters, Wild Rose's true raison d'etre comes to the fore - a reconnecting of family, of hopes and dreams, of life and reality, and of generations wanting the best for their next. There are moments of rare honesty in Rose, a mother who doesn't yet want to be, but who is, and in Walters, a mother who hasn't got what's she wanted in her daughter.

It's here that Wild Rose soars, in among its country soundtrack, in its examination of two women orbiting each other and clashing. While Rose's interactions with Susanna seem oddly undercooked and character intentions lost in a fog of under-writing, her interactions with her mother are deep, intense and honest.

The rebel at Wild Rose's heart may hold dear a country adage of "three chords and the truth", but the honest truth is this tried-and-tested formula film is really about the relationships between women, rather than a simple second shot at glory film - and for that, it deserves to be shouted with as much gusto as Rose-Lynn musters behind the microphone on stage.