Movie Review: 'Wild Rose' Is a Messy, Wonderful, Brilliant Movie

Wild Rose is an absolute powerhouse, a brilliantly written and performed movie with a star-making lead performance by Jessie Buckley, and yet another Academy Award level supporting turn from the incredible Julie Walter, arguably, the single most generous actress on the planet. Walter could steal any scene she's in and instead she helps everyone else into the spotlight through her remarkable strength.

Wild Rose is the story of Rose-Lynn (Buckley), a 20-something screw-up from Glasgow, Scotland. Rose has been a screw-up her whole life from giving birth to two kids before the age of 18, to spending weekends from her teen years through her twenties getting drunk and belting out country songs to finally, losing a year of her life to prison on a drug charge.

Rose is, like so many characters in movie history, her own worst enemy. Returning home from her year away, Rose doesn't rush home to her mother, Marion (Walter) and her two kids, Wynonna (Daisy Littlefield) and Lyle (Adam Mitchell). Instead, she finds her dopey, pre-prison boyfriend and the two have sex in a grassy field in view of passing traffic. Heedless barely describes our Rose.

Once she does return home, Rose can't wait to get back out again. She's eager to get back to the Grand Ole Opry. No, not the legendary one in Nashville, Tennessee, but the minimalist, Glasgow knockoff where she's been performing since she was 14 years old. When she finds out that she's been replaced, Rose takes it about as well as you would expect given my description of her thus far.

To make ends meet, Rose's mother has found her a job as a maid in a Posh house on the nicer side of Glasgow. There, Rose works for Susannah (Sophie Okenedo), a working mother of two with a rich husband. When Susannah hears Rose sing, she's deeply moved, and sets about finding ways to support her dream of being a singer.

But, Susannah doesn't know about Rose's past or her kids. For reasons that make sense only to Rose, she's chosen to lie to Susannah about her past and her life. Lying is a constant state of affairs for Rose. Rose lies about trivial things and important things, and it's a character trait that is infuriating and yet strangely sympathetic. As played by Jessie Buckley, you get the sense that telling the truth might be more than Rose could handle on any given day.

You're probably thinking that you can predict where Wild Rose is heading, but I assure you, you cannot. As directed by Tom Harper, best known for the lesser sequel to the horror movie The Woman in Black, and written by newcomer Nicole Taylor, Wild Rose has an entirely unpredictable trajectory. It's an arc that is authentic to Rose, the character who never seems to know what the next day will bring, and seems to only find trouble when she actually plans for something.

Jessie Buckley is stunning as Rose. Her powerhouse voice is one thing, but it is her acting chops that leave your jaw-dropped. Buckley came to fame as a reality show singing contestant, and then dropped out of sight so that she could attend the Royal Academy of the Arts. The lessons paid off, because not only can she blow your mind with a song, she has quiet moments in Wild Rose that are equally devastating in their emotional strength.

It's not all dramatics either, Buckley is charismatic, she's charming. She has a big brash personality as Rose that can be a tad obnoxious, but it's equally winning. She's raw and real, she screws up her life, and knows it, and then she searches herself for a way back to something that resembles equilibrium. Buckley's Rose feels achingly real in one moment, and then explodes into super-stardom when she sings.

Sometimes I recognize a movie is working on me when it taps into a place of deep anxiety. I suffer from anxiety in a way that it can be hard to deal with on a daily basis. It's not a state of mind I seek out. And yet, when Wild Rose tapped into my anxiety and placed me in a state of deep unease, I knew that it was because the movie had tapped into something incredibly, terrifyingly, real.

Wild Rose is one of the best movies of 2019. And a heads up to those, like me, who get emotional during movies, I cried like a baby during this movie so prepare yourself.