Rambling Rose

Rambling Rose begins near the end of the film, and then flashes back decades before, to the beginning of the story, how Rose (Laura Dern) came to live with the Hillyer family. Rose is a sweet girl, naive and pleasant and eager to please but she makes bad mistakes. She’s not a malicious person and doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, but she just can’t help herself.

Set in Alabama during the Great Depression, Rose is taken in by the Hillyer family as a servant, to save her from a life of prostitution. She cooks, cleans, and helps around the house. Daddy Hillyer (Robert Duvall) works hard and supports the family. Mrs. Hillyer (Diane Ladd, Laura Dern’s mother in real life) is an educated woman, pursuing her Master’s degree. Rose adores them both. And when she falls in love with Daddy Hillyer, it’s clear that it’s perhaps only because it’s the first time in her life that a man was ever nice to her.

Buddy, the eldest son of the Hillyer family (Lukas Haas) falls in love with Rose. Just when you begin to think that the movie is one thing, it moves on to the next thing. It never dwells on anything too long. Just when I was beginning to think that this was going to be a film about unrequited love and familial passions, a Southern Drama of the highest order. But these things solve themselves with a light airiness that I admired. Director, Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl) isn’t interested in the feuds and disagreements that people have, but in how they come together, and how they bond during difficult times.

Rambling Rose is about first loves–and my favorite kind of first love story, one that’s about a dysfunctional first love. Growing up is messy, and complicated. It’s sad and wonderful all in equal measure. The film understands this brilliantly and allows its dysfunctional messiness to dominate the story without being a trainwreck to crane our necks toward. It feels relatable and raw. No one’s story of first love unfolds like a classic movie. It unfolds with awkwardness, and sometimes it ends suddenly, without warning. And sometimes it stays with us for the rest of our lives. Rambling Rose feels like a real first love.

Everything comes together for Rambling Rose. Coolidge’s direction is strong and confident, with impeccable casting helping the characters feel alive. Daddy’s peculiar way of talking, the way he’ll not only completely mispronounce a word, but also butcher its definition, and then use it for a catch-all whose meaning varies from context to context, reminded me of something my own dad would have done. Mrs. Hillyer’s dedication to positivity even in her darkest moments, whether or not she truly believed her own words, made me admire her so much, for always striving to do the right thing, even if it isn't easy. And Buddy’s casual moods of cruelty, his mean streak he’d get into, and delight in causing people discomfort, is a gross trait that, unfortunately, a lot of people can relate to. Sometimes there’s catharsis in pettiness. 

Rose herself is a great character, too, owing a tremendous debt to Dern’s performance of her and to the screenplay by Calder Willingham, who has a great history of writing complex onscreen characters, having penned The Graduate. Willingham understands how hilarious sex can be, if only for its sheer awkwardness. While so many movies treat it as this ultra-serious affair, Willingham sees it as a comedy of errors, with two sweaty, goofy bodies hurling themselves at each other, to appease biological urges. 

The true strength to Rambling Rose, though, is in its direction from Coolidge. This is a film that needs to be directed by a woman. Ultimately, both Laura Dern and Diane Ladd were deservidly nominated for Oscars for their performances.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Rambling Rose rambles on to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber in a single-disc release, housed in a standard case with slipcover adoring identical cover art on both. When playing the film, the disc first loads to a home screen menu containing the option to play the feature, toggle subtitles or jump into supplemental features.

Rambling Rose is presented in 1080p high-definition video from a transfer from StudioCanal. Overall, the video presentation looks quite nice. Its Southern setting, bathed in sunlight, looks terrific in these moments. The color palette is softer, nearly pastel. The film looks like a memory, and that memory is filtered through dreamy nostalgia. Throughout, the film displays a fine layer of film grain. Rambling Rose was shot by cinematographer Johnny Jensen, who has a knack for films that have a comforting look, having also shot Grumpy Old Men, a movie so cozy I could curl up and sleep right inside of it. It suffers in a few lowlight, nighttime shots, and noisy shadows that pulsate with static. These moments are not common, as the bulk of the film is set during the day, but they can be distracting.

The sound mix on the Rambling Rose Blu-ray is in 2.0 stereo, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA and I have zero complaints here. It's a lively, active mix on the front end of the soundstage displaying a tremendous amount of ambient sound from its Alabama setting, with buzzing insects, rain falling, or a gentle breeze blowing. Elmer Bernstein's score gets a lot of play during this film and it ain't subtle. It manipulates the audience liberally and openly and I adore it. Elmer Bernstein is one of my all-time favorite composers, one who I think never got enough love. During those schmaltzy moments, he lays the score on thick. But he knows when to ease up and those quieter moments don't hammer us over the head. Sometimes we can let a moment just play out and speak for itself.

There are quite a few good features on this disc, particularly in having two audio commentaries to choose from, one from the director Martha Coolidge, and one from film critic Adam Nayman. There is also a slightly different alternate ending available, with optional audio commentary, interviews, outtakes, and an introduction by Coolidge.

• Audio Commentary - Director Martha Coolidge
• Audio Commentary - Film critic Adam Nayman
• Introduction (SD 0:30) - With Martha Coolidge
• Interview (SD 11:31) - With Martha Coolidge
• Alternate Ending (SD 9:27) - With optional audio commentary from Martha Coolidge
• Outtakes (SD 8:05) - With optional audio commentary from Martha Coolidge
• Trailers - Featuring a trailer for Rambling Rose and other thematically-similar titles available from Kino Lorber

Rambling Rose feels like the kind of movie you'd see on TV back in the day, when you were a kid, and you'd remember it for decades afterward. Occasionally the memory of it would pop into your head and you'd think, "Wow, that was a good movie." I mean that, of course, as the highest kind of praise. There's a palpable nostalgic warmth to it. It's a wonderful story, beautifully told, and one that I'm glad to see receive such a great Blu-ray release. Rambling Rose, from Kino Lorber, comes Recommended.