Wild Rose

There’s that scene in “Walk the Line” when Johnny Cash auditions for Sun Records with some run-of-the-mill gospel tune and gets dressed down by Sam Phillips for not singing what’s really in his heart. The moment, never mind the dialogue, is, like a lot of the movie, a bit purple, but the point remains. And then Johnny sings “Folsom Prison Blues” and the rest is history. Of course, “Walk the Line” only shows a little of what led to this moment because it’s a comprehensive biopic spanning years. Tom Harper’s “Wild Rose”, on the other hand, a fictional film about a burgeoning country (not western) singer in Glasgow named Rose-Lynn Harlan (Jessie Buckley), is beholden to no such limitations and so the film essentially builds to its own version of that Sam Phillips showdown. And if considerable drama on the way to that rousing climax is ripped from the Inspirational Movie playbook, the screenplay by Nicole Taylor proves far more clever, using those expectations against us, not skewering them but gently usurping them.

Rose-Lynn is released from prison on a heroin rap as “Wild Rose” opens, which in its rapid-fire edits of her strutting around in white cowboy boots and white fringe jacket comes across like a triumphant music video, culminating in her return to the Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry, where the people in charge seem less than excited to her, brought home in how Buckley frequently plays the part full of herself, like the aspiring country stardom she constantly cites is just her God given right. Her entitlement is as flagrant as the “three chords and the truth” tattoo on her forearm, enough to make you wince, to think, does the movie really believe this? It doesn’t, thankfully, not entirely, brought home when she tacks a map of Nashville to her bedroom wall. In that moment, pointedly stripped of her country (not western) costuming, she looks less like a ball-breaker than a young girl, and Nashville looks so far away.

Rose-Lynn’s attitude is contrasted against her being a mother, of a little girl and a little boy, ages eight and five, who are in the care of her mother (Julie Walters) and who she goes to see after getting sprung from the clink only after having drunk a beer and shagging her boyfriend, shining a harsh if effective light on where her kids stack up in the order of things. Her boy being reduced to just screaming things like “I hate you!” while slamming doors and her girl hardly able to talk at all might denote ignoring the hard work of turning pre-teen characters into real people, true, but it still works by putting into perspective how they don’t really know their mom as mom. If everywhere else Buckley is kinetically, even frightfully at times, alive, in scenes with her kids she shrinks, hunching over, and almost lets her mouth fall open in a way suggesting she wants to say something but doesn’t know how to speak to them at all. And occasionally the resentment that builds up in Buckley’s eyes, and the editors going to close-ups in those moments, even lets the notion uncomfortably hang in the air that she doesn’t want these kids at all.

This family responsibility, then, exerts dramatic pressure on her country singing dream, much more so than the foible of not knowing someone in the industry, one which gets cleared up right quick when Rose-Lynn takes a job cleaning house for Susannah (Sophie Okonedo). The labor such a job entails is forgotten almost straight away when Rose-Lynn is caught in the midst of an “All the Right Moves”-ish solo dance party, instantly cluing Susannah into her employee’s talent and thereby finding ways to help her dream of going to Nashville come true. Susannah might exist merely as a conduit to Rose-Lynn’s aspirations, but Okonedo’s deft performance nevertheless brings the character to life, playing the part with a good-humored eagerness that suggests despite obvious love for her own children she is still pining for some, any, artistic fulfillment. And even if Susannah’s career aid comes easily, it also slyly plays up the class divide, demonstrating how little it takes for the rich to summon assistance when necessary.

“Wild Rose” seems to be trekking along a predictable path of uplift, right down to the False Crisis. But just when it seems to be ramping up for the big ending, Harper and Taylor make a helluva move, damn near dissolving with Rose-Lynn still in her fantasy. That would have been chutzpah, and part of me is still a little disappointed that it didn’t, though what it does do is strong enough. Early on Taylor’s script plants the seed that Rose-Lynn is just a singer, not a writer, dovetailing with how loudly the character can talk even if at the most crucial moments she doesn’t know what to say. And as the movie concludes with Rose-Lynn taking the stage, she finds her voice.