“Home,” wrote Robert Frost in The Death of the Hired Man, “is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

And after serving a twelve-month prison sentence in Cornton Vale for hurling a bag of heroine over said prison wall, home for aspiring Country singer Rose-Lynn Harlan (Jessie Buckley) is the doorstep of her mother’s (Julie Walters) semi-detached in the concrete jungle of Glasgow.

About as far from Nashville as Jimmy Saville is from sainthood.

Deprived a return to the Grand Ole Opry for swinging a punch at the rat-catcher-turned-headliner – and with two estranged kids to feed, one newly-acquired council house to heat and not a bean to her name – she follows in the arthritic footsteps of her mother’s friend to become a cleaner for the well-to-do Susannah (Sophie Okonedo) in a big hoose in the burbs.

But her hopes of making it as a County singer in Nashville grow bigger by the day. As do her responsibilities to her children who if it weren’t for the tireless support of her mother, would probably be in care.

What’s a girl to do? Stuff her dreams in a shoebox under her bed? Or go walkin’ after midnight in her white cowboy boots?

Watching Jessie Buckley light up the screen in Wild Rose is reminiscent of watching Angie Darcy own the stage in Peter Arnott’s autobiographical gig-theatre Janis Joplin: Full Tilt in that both give electrifying performances which are brutally honest, fearless and funny, childlike yet sexy, and as natural and wild as a rose.

And. What. A. Voice.

One minute, tender and vulnerable; the next, belting like Bassey. Putting her own personal stamp on familiar covers by Country artists such as Emmylou Harris and Wynonna Judd; as well as a number of original tunes co-written with screenwriter Nicole Taylor. “Glasgow (No Place Like Home)” being the standout.

But it’s not only Buckley who shines, for the actors playing her estranged children give incredibly nuanced performances too. As does Julie Walters whose granite face cracks with emotion when talk of choosing hope over responsibility opens old wounds.

So credit to director Tom Harper for showing the real People who Make Glasgow. Many of whom, like Rose, are dismissed and derided as Bams, when in actual fact they are Jams – Just About Managing – through no thanks to an ever-increasing class divide as symbolised by cinematographer George Still’s brutal juxtaposition of tower blocks and housing schemes with leafy gardens and gated mansions.

Where there is life, though, there is hope. And it is hope Rose clings to as she weighs up where to call home.

Director: Tom Harper
Writer: Nicole Taylor
Stars: Julie Walters, Jessie Buckley, Craig Parkinson
Peter Callaghan
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