Verdict
Summary
A potent, if slightly plotted coming of age drama based on a book by Calder Willingham, Rambling Rose has memorable performances (Dern and Ladd were both nominated for Academy Awards), but it leaves a strange taste after it’s over, and it’s not necessarily a pleasant one. If it were a comedy it might’ve worked better, but it shoots for the heart and soul, so the film has some jagged edges and has enough power to inflict wounds that resonate.
Plot:
A young, attractive ex-prostitute is hired by an affluent Southern family to be cook, maid, and caretaker of everyone in the home, leading to all sorts of complications.
Review:
An affluent Southern family living in a big home with three kids, a mother with a disability, and a father constantly working at a hotel in town takes a big step by hiring outside help in the form of a bit of a tootsie: an ex-prostitute named Rose (Laura Dern). When Rose arrives, she’s an immediate sensation for the father (played by Robert Duvall), who must keep his honor and dignity intact when it becomes clear that Rose is much more than the family bargained for. She throws herself at him with uninhibited abandon, trying to seduce him because it’s simply how she behaves. It doesn’t work, thank goodness, because he’s a good man who loves his hearing impaired wife (played by Dern’s real mother Diane Ladd), a woman who doesn’t quite realize the spitfire or stick of dynamite Rose is. There’s also the teenaged boy in the house (played by Lucas Haas) who immediately becomes Rose’s next target, and when she seduces him (in a strangely erotic but totally inappropriate scene), his innocence is lost, but he’ll forever be held in thrall of her sexual prowess and be grateful to her for what they shared that one strange night. Wherever she goes, Rose draws attention – especially from men – and she knows it and capitalizes on it, and when she eventually finds “Mr. Perfect” (played by Robert John Burke), she moves out of the home where she’s employed, but by then she’s already changed their lives forever.
A potent, if slightly plotted coming of age drama based on a book by Calder Willingham, Rambling Rose has memorable performances (Dern and Ladd were both nominated for Academy Awards), but it leaves a strange taste after it’s over, and it’s not necessarily a pleasant one. If it were a comedy it might’ve worked better, but it shoots for the heart and soul, so the film has some jagged edges and has enough power to inflict wounds that resonate. Filmmaker Martha Coolidge really “goes there” with the sexuality and in some ways it’s both shocking and erotic, but it’s never easy to digest. Rose is an original character, one which I found to be both dangerous and innocent (and purely feminine, and never necessarily predatory), and Dern’s performance is admirably bold and uninhibited. Haas, as always, gave a solid performance as a boy who becomes a man the hard way, and his character as an adult was played by John Heard in the scenes set in 1971. Elmer Bernstein did the delightful score.
Kino Lorber brings Rambling Rose to Blu-ray for the first time, and it comes in a nice high definition transfer, with two audio commentaries (one with Coolidge, another with a film historian), an alternate ending and outtakes, and introduction by Coolidge, an interview with Coolidge, and the trailer. There’s also a slipcover.
