Rambling Rose

Georgia, 1935. Rose, twenty years old and out of a difficult past, arrives to work for the Hillyer family. She is afraid of nobody and offers affection openly, which in this town is a serious problem. The Hillyers' thirteen year old son Buddy falls in love with her, the father is uncomfortable, and the mother defends her. Martha Coolidge directs, from Calder Willingham's novel, which he adapted himself. Laura Dern plays Rose, Diane Ladd plays Mrs Hillyer, Robert Duvall the father and Lukas Haas plays Buddy. The most repeated fact about it comes from the casting: Diane Ladd is Laura Dern's actual mother. Both were nominated for the same film that year, Dern for lead actress and Ladd for supporting, the first real mother and daughter to be nominated together. Coolidge refuses to make Rose either a victim or a lesson. The film treats her sexuality not as a problem but as something the people around her cannot process, and it puts the discomfort where it belongs, on the town. Who it is for: viewers who like period drama in the American South and films carried by performance. Who it is not for: the scenes between Buddy and Rose sit badly now, and the film does not entirely own that.