Watch at Home: ‘Wild Rose’ & more from female filmmakers

Jessie Buckley in Wild Rose.
Jessie Buckley in Wild Rose. Courtesy of NEON.

FF2 Media’s new “Watch at Home” columns list the new films written and/or directed by women filmmakers that are newly available each week on DVD, Video On Demand &/or streaming services.

Here are the new films written and/or directed by women filmmakers now available at home as of 9/20/2019 (with links to FF2 Media reviews posted the week of their theatrical release):

  • Polaroid – Blair Butler (writer)
  • Wild Rose – Nicole Taylor (writer)

DANIELLE’S TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

This week’s selection is Wild Rose. Serving as a love letter to Glasgow, Wild Rose shows how far one woman will go if it means becoming a star in Music City.

Rose-Lynn Harlan (Jessie Buckley) wants to hit the big time as a country singer but there’s one minor problem–she lives in Scotland.  This isn’t to say that pursuing her dreams will be easy because it won’t.  Her own economic situation, let alone a drug-addiction past that put her in jail, won’t be of any help in finding employment.

While Rose-Lynn wants to be in Nashville, her mother, Marion (Julie Walters), would rather she focus on her children upon coming home.  This isn’t really a bad idea after being in jail for a year.  After all, her family life is not all that great.

Nicole Taylor has written a beautiful screenplay that shows a love of country music.  When you get to the core of it, the music-centered script is a coming-of-age story with a mother-and-daughter relationship at the heart of it.  By the end of the film, we see how this young woman from Glasgow has grown up.

Jessie Buckley delivers a star-making performance.  It’s no wonder that the film was highly buzzed about in Toronto.  This was the first of four music-centered films I watched at the fest and they all have their own special things.  The idea of a Scottish woman wanting to make it big as a country singer reads like a fish-out-of-water story.  Yet this film truly works because she’s an underdog.  It’s because of this status that we find ourselves connecting with the performance let alone enjoying the music.

Dreams may seem like they’re impossible in Wild Rose but if there’s a message to take away, it ought to be that one can’t just give up without trying at least once.

Please click HERE for my full review.

© Danielle Solzman (09/20/19) FF2 Media

Featured photos from Wild Rose EPK
Photo Credits: NEON

Tags: Jessie Buckley, Nicole Taylor, Wild Rose

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Danielle Solzman is a Chicago-based film critic and an aspiring filmmaker if she can ever put enough time aside to work on her feature-length trans-led political comedy script. When not in Chicago, she attends various film festivals such as Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, and Toronto. She graduated from Northern Kentucky University with a BA in Public Relations while earning a Masters in Media Communications from Webster University after writing a thesis paper on comic books against the backdrop of the American political culture.
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