Wild Rose **** (2018, Jessie Buckley, Julia Walters, Craig Parkinson, Sophie Okonedo, Bob Harris) – Movie Review

I really enjoyed Wild Rose. Jessie Buckley and Julia Walters are both great as Rose-Lynn Harlan, a Glasgow musician with dreams of becoming a Nashville country singer star, and her sad and world-weary mum Marion.

A Glasgow-set popular artwork of a movie, it looks and sounds fantastic. It is expertly steered along by director Tom Harper and equally expertly written by Nicole Taylor. Acting-wise, Sophie Okonedo also does well as Susannah, the middle-class lady of the house where Rose-Lynn gets a cleaning job.

Rose-Lynn is reunited with her son and daughter after a spell in jail, but the road back to life in Glasgow is rocky enough, let alone the road to Nashville. Marion is fed up with Rose’s fantasies, but Susannah becomes her unexpected champion. This maybe be unlikely, but much more unlikely is that Rose stays positive and optimistic, despite all setbacks. Nevertheless, Buckley makes you go with it, and believe in, as well as like and admire, her rather abrasive character. Yes Buckley, like Rose, has charisma as well as cheek, plus the talent to pull it off.

Maybe Buckley and Walters are better than the film, which has a few very unlikely twists and turns, and buys into the fame thing too easily, verging on the cliched and predictable, but it is still very good anyway. It is a heart-warming crowd-pleaser, with quite a bit of bite along the way to its expected happy, fairy-tale ending, recalling Billy Elliot, which also provided a sweet role for Walters.

Irish singer and actress Buckley came in second place in the BBC talent reality show I’d Do Anything in 2008 when she was competing as a potential Nancy in Oliver! She is 30 on 28 December 2019. She can certainly sing as well as act, and Wild Rose is a great showcase for her in both roles, and her Glasgow accent isn’t too bad, certainly better than that of Dame Julie Walters, from Edgbaston, Birmingham, one of the few very slight niggles about the film. Other than that, Walters is at her best, bringing the film’s underlying sadness to balance the too-easy showbiz optimism.  ‘I wanted you to learn responsibility. I didn’t want to take away your hope,’ she tells Rose.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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