Taglines: Innocence has never been so seductive.
Rambling Rose movie review. Before you can get to the wry tone and strong-willed people of “Rambling Rose,” you have to sit through a short corn-pone opening. In 1971, a middle-aged man drives to his hometown in Georgia. He is heading toward a flashback about the dusty old days when he was a 13-year-old called Buddy, with a life-shaping crush on a sweet but wild young woman named Rose.
As the adult Buddy Hillyer, John Heard assumes a hopeless Southern accent to say, “In deep Dixieland, the month of Octobah is almost summry,” a line worth mentioning only because it so glaringly sets the wrong tone. “Rambling Rose” sounds like it will be full of molasses, but when the story moves back to 1935, it becomes honest, engaging and quite a lot like its perky, disreputable heroine.
Rose (Laura Dern) has been sent to work as the Hillyers’ servant because too many men have pursued her at home. Or was it the other way around? As she approaches the yard, she manages to looks innocent, gawky and provocative with no effort at all. Her blond ringlets peek out from her close-fitting hat and her long legs are clearly visible beneath her sheer flowered dress — a dress worn, we’re meant to notice, without a petticoat.
The Hillyer household is full of types, and the casting is pat. Diane Ladd is the smart but slightly loony mother, who takes off her hearing aid to work on her master’s thesis for Columbia University. When Mother talks about the mystical meaning of the universe, her crusty, gentlemanly husband (Robert Duvall) says she is “lost in the fourth dimension” again. Lukas Haas plays the precocious Buddy. Along with Ms. Dern as the sexually eager young thing, the actors are superb, though they have all played these types too often for anyone to be surprised at how good they are here.
Yet “Rambling Rose” always finds some fresh angle. The younger children, a girl called Doll Baby and a boy called Waski, are already shrewd enough to realize that their nicknames are ridiculous.
And when Rose becomes as drastically infatuated with Mr. Hillyer as Buddy is with Rose, the situation produces two improbably sweet and funny near-sex scenes. First Rose stops washing dishes and flings herself onto Mr. Hillyer’s lap, begging to be kissed, while Buddy and Doll peek in through the kitchen door. The children don’t actively take sides, but seem to be rooting for Rose. Mr. Hillyer comes to his senses and is incredulous. “A man is supposed to be a fool about this,” he yells, but not women. “What are you, a nincompoop?” he asks Rose, with concern that turns fatherly.
The distraught Rose goes to Buddy’s room for some innocent comfort, only to have him politely ask her to quench his sexual curiosity. While lying next to him on his bed, Rose says, “You’re just a child and wouldn’t understand, but that kind of thing can stir a girl up.” The direction by Martha Coolidge (best known for the very different female-awakening movie “Valley Girl”) and Calder Willingham’s script are at their height in these delicate, hilarious episodes.
Soon Rose marches off to town to find a new man, with Mr. Hillyer and Buddy watching from their car. They are impressed with the speed of her success. Before long there are “scoundrels,” as Mr. Hillyer puts it, fighting about her in the front yard, ruining the bushes and disrupting the family’s sleep.
Some people would call Rose herself a sexual scoundrel. Mr. Hillyer is unsure, and thinks she ought to leave their house; his wife protects her. The film sides with Mother, but becomes simplistic when Rose says, “Girls don’t want sex; girls want love.” The aphorism is not good enough for this rich and understanding portrayal.
At the end, the film wanders off with Mother into the fourth dimension, as if all the sentimentality that had been kept on hold were flooding into the movie. But even the mawkish beginning and end cannot ruin the delicious center of “Rambling Rose.” Though it is seen though the eyes of a 13-year-old, this is an uncommon coming-of-age story, one in which a whole family questions the mysteries of sex, loyalty and love.
All about Rambling Rose movie.
Rambling Rose (1991)
Directed by: Martha Coolidge
Starring: Laura Dern, Robert Duvall, Diane Ladd, Lukas Haas, John Heard, Kevin Conway, Lisa Jakub, Evan Lockwood, Matthew Sutherland, David E. Scarborough, Richard K. Olsen
Screenplay by: Calder Willingham
Production Design by: John Vallone
Cinematography by: Johnny E. Jensen
Film Editing by: Steven Cohen
Costume Design by: Jane Robinson
Set Decoration by: Robert Gould
Art Direction by: Christiaan Wagener
Music by: Elmer Bernstein
MPAA Rating: R for sensuality.
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
Release Date: September 20, 1991
Visits: 140
