Wild Rose

A music film set in Glasgow. Rose-Lynn comes out of prison. She served a year and has a tag on her ankle. She has two children. Her mother looked after them. The children do not know her. The younger will not hold her, the older does not speak. Rose wants to be a country singer. She means to go to Nashville and describes it not as a dream but as a plan. Because of the tag she cannot be out after seven. That is exactly when the stages are. From there the film is a story about work. Rose starts cleaning in a house. Susannah, who owns it, hears her. She likes the voice and wants to help. She raises money, makes contacts, and arranges a concert. Rose does not tell the truth. She hides her children, her sentence and the tag. Her mother Marion is against it. She does not believe her daughter; to her the matter is not talent but responsibility. The mother and daughter scenes are the film's hardest. What the narrative is interested in is not music but a choice: its idea is that the dream being real and her children waiting for her are true at the same time, and that neither cancels the other. An accident happens and the narrative takes Rose to the bottom. The Nashville section is short. The narrative does not give what is expected there. The final song is one Rose wrote herself and the whole answer is in it. Jessie Buckley sings herself and her voice carries the film. Tom Harper directed. Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters, Sophie Okonedo and Jamie Sives are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes music films and Scottish social drama. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the classic rise-to-stardom shape; the film breaks that on purpose and its ending is not the one predicted.