Glasgow girl from the wrong side of the tracks holds on to her dream of being a country singer despite the consequence of sad youthful folly which has left her with no money, two fatherless children and a criminal record.  Her mother thinks Rose should learn to take responsibility before indulging her fantasy of going to Nashville and hitting the big time.  She starts working as a daily cleaner for a rich and generous woman who takes a shine to her and likes her singing, and who might just be able to open some doors for her.     

Wild Rose is not so much a rags-to-riches as a getting-of-wisdom story.  I liked many things about it, the music foremost among them.  Jessie Buckley sure can sing and the songs are good.  I also liked that Rose is played as a not entirely sympathetic character.  Watch for the scene early on where she badmouths the kindly older woman who’s done her the favour of introducing her to the nice rich lady AND getting her off the hook when the nice lady asks where she’s been working recently.    

I like a story that avoids the clichés of its genre and that maintains some unpredictability in the plot.  Which is not to say I want all my expectations trashed and confounded.  There has to be hope and redemption and some manner of happy ending.  Wild Rose obeys this unwritten law. 

Plus it passed my tissue test.  As in, several were thoroughly moistened.

If I have a complaint it’s that I missed at least half the dialogue because of the thick Glaswegian accents.  My companion reported a similar difficulty.  We could generally work out what was happening and the gist of what was said from the context, but not for the first time it occurred to me that there is a case for subtitling movies made in any variety of heavily dialectal English.  And I know I’m not alone in this; lots of critics and movie-lovers have said so.