Rambling Rose
Tags: romantic, depressing, flashback

Plot synopsis:
In 1971, a grown Buddy returns to his former family home and reflects back on his youth during The Great Depression when Rose (Laura Dern) came to live with his family in order to escape her miserable life in Birmingham where she was being forced into prostitution. The Hillyers are an eccentric family who take Rose in as a domestic servant. Rose quickly begins to admire Mrs. Hillyer (Diane Ladd) who is working on her doctoral dissertation and who she learns was orphaned at a young age, just as Rose had been. Rose also develops a crush on the paternal and warm Mr. Hillyer that the three Hillyer children and Mr. Hillyer become aware of while Mrs. Hillyer remains oblivious.
Eventually Rose kisses Mr. Hillyer who at first responds to her advances and then becomes angered at her and rebuffs her. Buddy witnesses Rose and Mr. Hillyer kissing and later, when Rose comes to talk to him at night, he repeatedly tries to grab and massage her breast just as his father had done while he was kissing Rose. Eventually to satisfy his curiosity Rose allows 13 year old Buddy to masturbate her. Afterwards she is apologetic and upset and begs him not to tell anyone.
The Hillyers begin to disagree about Rose's presence in their lives. Mr. Hillyer worries that Rose is too promiscuous and will begin to make their lives miserable but Mrs. Hillyer sees her promiscuity as her way of trying to obtain love and attention.
Strange men begin lurking around the house. Mr. Hillyer attributes this to Rose but she repeatedly denies knowing them. However, Rose is eventually arrested when some of her men begin brawling in a bar and she bites the finger of a policeman. Though the police and Mrs. Hillyer are willing to forgive Rose, Mr. Hillyer insists on firing her, but before he can Rose is hospitalized with pneumonia. The attending doctor reveals that Rose is likely not the poor country girl she portrayed herself as. After she recovers, Rose seems to be on her best behaviour but Mr. Hillyer eventually catches her with a man in her room. He fires her and obtains a position on a dairy farm in Tennessee for her. When he informs Rose she begins crying as she does not want her future child being born on a farm.
Mr. Hillyer believes she is lying about being pregnant and the Hillyers take her to a doctor where they learn that while she is showing signs of being pregnant she actually has an ovarian cyst and is sterile because of untreated gonorrhea contracted when she was 15. The doctor recommends a hysterectomy in order to control Rose's promiscuous behaviour. While Mr. Hillyer at first agrees to the operation Mrs. Hillyer argues against it and eventually persuades the two men. Rose is treated for her cyst and returns home where she eventually marries her first husband, David, the policeman whose finger she bit. In 1971, Buddy reveals that Rose married three more times and was eventually happy and faithful to her last husband. He goes to talk to his father who tells him that Rose died the previous week. When Buddy begins crying Mr. Hillyer tells him that Rose is a person who will never really die as she will live on forever in their hearts.

Review: Appealing In Its Own Way. I haven't seen this film in quite a while but I have pretty good memories about it.
It's an intriguing film, something different and appealing even though some of the subject matter is "inappropriate."I saw the last word because it involves a 13-year-old boy whose hormones are raging and his brief relationship with a grown woman.
Other than that, I don't remember anything else objectionable.I like the photography and always enjoy seeing the old days - here it's the 1920s and 1930s - portrayed on today's films with the great cameramen and directors of today.
Also, the South has some beautiful scenery that is eloquently on display here.The story is well-acted with real-life mother-daughter Diane Ladd and Laura Dern, along with Robert Duvall and Lukas Haas.
The latter plays the young man and was already somewhat of a star after playing the young Amish boy in the 1985 film "Witness." Duvall is one of the finest actors of his generation so you always get a good performance out of him.This is a pretty low-key story but never puts you to sleep.
Modern day feminists might like this film was Ladd plays that role to the hilt.
I love the music score and the soft period lighting it provides in telling the story of Rose - a down on her luck teen-age almost adult girl who comes to live with a southern family during the depression in the 1930's.
I count this movie with others of its' kind (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER to name a few) as providing a wonderful opportunity to become a part of another's family memory.
These kind of movies are capable of evoking in us a remembrance of our own childhood and bringing out feelings of warmth and caring that many of us have in common.I highly recommend it for its beautiful photography and wonderful music..
This film is essentially character-driven and features excellent performances throughout, particularly the four principals-Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Robert Duvall and Lukas Haas.
Ladd and Dern mother and daughter in real life) give especially fine performances and deservedly received nominatins for the Academy Awards In the Actress and Supporting Actress categories.
Laura Dern's performance is astonishing as the Rose of the title who has a shady past and comes to live with a family headed up by Robert Duvall and Diane Lane (her real life mother) who gives a wonderful performance also.The story is a cobweb, if story it is, I haven't read the novel,and the plot is character driven all the way.The sexual content is handled sensitively and the fact that Rose is a 'nymphomaniac' of the era - i.e. she loves sex - is understood and tolerated by the family.The eldest child, Buddy, is played by Lukas Haas who has many good performances to his credit - and has never turned down a movie role since he was five - who has an evil streak according to his mother but keeps certain secrets about Rose along with his father who also has secrets.An amazingly tolerant and lovable family headed by a father with integrity - which was a bit of a stumble for me as Robert Duvall's incessant smirking does not translate as such to me.
In this limp Southern period piece a wholesome young belle with the innocence of an angel and the manners of a whore supposedly disrupts the progressive Georgia household of Robert Duvall and Diane Ladd.
The title role gives Laura Dern a vehicle for some overripe histrionics, but despite her promiscuity Rose is simply one saint in a family of saints, and every conflict quickly disappears to allow them all a chance to live happily ever after (Rose is even spared the consequences of her constant, physical 'search for affection' by a convenient inability to bear children).
2 characters stand apart in the film, one of the girl Rose played brilliantly by Laura Dern, and of the mother, played by Laura's real mom, Diane Ladd.
Robert Duvall is very believable as the head of the family in the southern in the 1930s.
I liked the gentle pace of the movie, and its buildup towards the end, where Diane garners herself for a confrontation with the self proclaimed keepers of the virtues, including her own husband.
I like the way their Diane's and Robert's characters undergo transformations, small ones but enough to keep the audience attached to the film at an emotional level.
Even days after watching the movie, you'd have the images of the cheerful, sometimes confused, lively and lovely Rose, flashing in front of your eyes.
And that's makes the use of a narrative, which some people didn't like about this movie, so appropriate.
If I had known someone like Rose in my lifetime, I would definately told this story to everybody I knew, many times over..
Director Martha Coolidge isn't especially graceful here, moving the film along in fits and starts, and when it becomes apparent that there isn't much to the story beyond the central situation, it just becomes a chore.
Real-life mother and daughter Diane Ladd and Laura Dern each earned Oscar nominations for their work (an Academy first), but young Lukas Haas (standing in, perhaps, for Willingham) gives the most interesting performance as the teenager with a crush on his family's flirtatious houseguest.
Robert Duvall was splendid in this movie.
I do not want to ruin it for people watching, so I can not tell you much but his acting was great as well as Laura Dern.
This movie had it all, love, conflict, compassion, passion and all great acting too!
Laura Dern offers a very realistic and convincing performance that marks her as a great character actress.
Duvall is wonderful in a role that demands a vast understanding of human emotion and character study of his part.
Uhhh...did that 14 year old just fondle Laura Dern?.
Unfortunately, Rose is an incredibly vexing character, and not is the way the movie intends.
Buddy recalls the Great Depression when Rose (Laura Dern) came to work for his family.
Rose flirts with father Hillyer (Robert Duvall) but he rebuffs her.
Young Buddy (Lukas Haas) has a sexual encounter with Rose.
Father wants to send Rose away while mother argues to keep her.This is a nostalgic jazzy rambling reminiscence of a compelling character.
I cringe when I hear Paul Newman, his wife Joan Woodward or Elizabeth Taylor trying to be "Southern." I liked "Rambling Rose" because, for once, the actors nailed it.
Only to be expected, I guess, since Diane Ladd is from Mississippi and Laura Dern is her daughter.
Well, he's just one helluva an actor.) Aside from the accents, the acting was outstanding.Also I thought the soft summery lighting was perfect, unlike some period movies that seem done in comic book colors.
I wonder where the location scenes were shot--anybody know?The story itself wasn't great, but was above average, IMHO..
Rambling Rose is one of my all time favorites...love Laura Dern.
Rambling Rose was a wonderful, sweet movie set in the south in the 1920-1930 period...with a great cast.
I loved it when Robert Duvall took on the old doctor head on...to save Rose.
Criminally underrated film with great Laura Dern performance..
It's unfortunate than few people have seen this film even though both Laura Dern and her mother Diane Ladd were nominated for Oscars for their performances.
Laura Dern is AMAZING as a sweet innocent whose unabashed sexuality shocks those around her.
A middle aged man remembers a girl that came to live with his family when he was in his early teens.
I will never cease to be amazed how historically inaccurate movies are or how morally bankrupt the people responsible for making films these days are.
It simply would not have happened and all the stupid reasons it might have happened are leftist writers pushing their agenda using a period movie to disguise their moral depravity.
Martha Coolidge's best film, this is a comedy-drama about Rose, a sexually aggressive girl (Laura Dern) who moves in with a well-to-do Southern family and changes their lives.
As close to perfect as it could possibly be, this film features a top-notch cast, evocative cinematography and set decoration that brings to life the Depression-era South, and a great score by Elmer Bernstein.
Standouts in the cast are Dern (no one else could have played this role) and Diane Ladd, who is heartbreaking as Rose's greatest defender.
Dern and Ladd were both nominated for Oscars, the first mother-daughter to do so for the same film and in the same year..
Laura Dern puts in the best performance I've seen here.
Robert Duvall is always worth watching and his role here is no exception.
Diane Ladd and Lukas Haas are nothing short of remarkable as mother and son in this quiet family-centered coming-of-age piece.
And, Laura Dern makes the difficult title role her own by making her character's weakness and vulnerabilities also her strengths and virtues.
Set in the South of the 1930's, film tells the story of "Rambling" Rose(Beautiful and appealing Laura Dern) who comes to the home of "Daddy" Hillyer(Robert Duvall), his wife "Mother"(Diane Ladd) and children, one of whom named Buddy(Lucas Haas) will come to love Rose, as she settles into their lives as a maid, but whose charm and beauty attract the attentions of all the local men, much to her employer's consternation, which will lead to a chain of events to have a lasting impact on the family, especially Buddy.Very well acted film recreates its specific time & place quite well, and has an interesting story and character development.
Gorgeous, touching film about a Southern family in the 1930s whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of Rose (Laura Dern), a so-called "loose" woman with a real heart of gold.
Dern is perfectly cast in the delightful title role, and her real-life mother Diane Ladd is brilliant as the matriarch of the conservative clan who does everything in her power to make sure the ignorant and self-righteous men around her don't harm the charming and "rambling" girl.
I feel like there's a really great film hidden somewhere inside here.
Laura Dern really is brilliant in this though, as is both Duvall and Ladd.
Lukas Haas should win a special award for "work ethic": he's hardly skipped a year for movies appearing since he was 7, and IMDb lists him with SIX in various stages of pre-production at this writing.
In the present one, he's 15 playing Buddy, a Depression-era 13-y/o whose family takes in Rose, a vivacious and sexually rather uninhibited young woman, especially for that time.
An ingénue nymphomaniac's turbulent life rooted in the 1930s depression period of southern USA, served as a housemaid in a hotel owner's home, our heroine Rose, an uncultured but stalwart gal whose miserable past is the hidden wound cuts her deep and being unaware of her sex-addicted disposition, her path of looking for Mr. Right is rather bumpy and poignant.
The film is narrated by Buddy, the eldest son of the hotel owner, Rose is his first love and always occupies a special place in his heart.
Although Rose is the potent pillar of the film, female director Martha Coolidge has steadily integrates a handful of equally vivid characters (young Buddy, his Daddy and Mother) into a moderate template of chanelling and rescuing Rose from her self-destructive hazard, despite of wanting any laudable gambits in highlighting the narrative skills and the plot is always stuck into a hoary frivolousness, the complete work is at best satisfactory.The film is noteworthy by setting a record in the history of the academy by virtue of a real mother-daughter pair garners two Oscar nominations in the same film, Dern and Ladd (a second collaboration in a film after Lynch's WILD AT HEART 1990, 7/10) both showcase their stunning acting bent.
Dern has nailed a quite innately delicate role since Rose is the damaged goods by nature, but her pure kindness and innocence hasn't been impaired and her female vulnerability is the real gem under the circumstance, even if she would mature gracefully later and give a more challenging and nail-biting performance in Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006, 7/10), this film is among the crests of her filmography nonetheless.
Ladd, after the pompous and lavish turn in WILD AT HEART, unexpectedly chooses a more positive and orthodox good-lady embodiment, her award-worthy moment confidently present itself in the latter part of the film, and single- handedly salvaging Rose from the misogyny from seedy male-predominance.
But Duvall is also glittering in his category-fraud (I put him in leading) portrait of a man who is much wiser than he initially appears, and a juvenile Lukas Haas, almost being provocative while driven by curious sex impulse to take advantage of Rose, which might be the most contentious segment of the film per se, and at least he acts like a pro.
It's a great story about a young woman trying to start a new life by living with a family and taking care of the children and helping the mother out with household chores.
She falls in love with the husband, Robert Duvall, and the 13 year-old, Buddy, played by Lukas Haas falls in love with her.
Her real life mother, Diane Ladd, plays Robert Duvall's wife.
I've watched this movie many times...I think it was wonderfully put together.
My best friend is Evan Lockwood, the one who played Waski, Robert Duvall's youngest son in the movie.
I love hearing tales about his experience in this movie with Laura Dern, Robert Duvall, and the rest of this great cast.
I own this movie and recommend everyone to watch it at least once and admit to falling in love with Rose..
Good acting, middling movie.
The performances of Duvall, Ladd, and Dern are all excellent and I especially liked Ladd's quirky feminist humanist character.I did NOT like the flashback wrapper.
Laura Dern's best acting.
The story, set in 30's of states, present us with Rose, who is a maid at the household and somehow so sexy girl that men come around to watch her, which actually wasn't so accepted those days...It is a good movie that leaves you with a warm feeling for a person born on "wrong time"..
Quirky and Fun. Rose (Laura Dern) is taken in by the Hillyer family to serve as a 1930s housemaid so that she can avoid falling into a life of prostitution.
Rose's appearance and personality is such that all men fall for her, and Rose knows it.Some of this film is a little bit scandalous.
Perhaps there ought to be laws about certain things (though this was the 1930s and people didn't care back then).Laura Dern has made a nice career out of quirky roles.
I don't know the films of Martha Coolidge, but after seeing this one, I think maybe I ought to look for more..
Laura Dern is sort of underrated, maybe that is because Miss Dern has commingled movie acting with TV roles.
Laura Dern's acting competence is right up there at her feminine attractiveness.Different from the very popular Jurassic Park.
Ramblin' Rose is a movie with a practical transference into a role of a simple but level-headed call girl in the South during the Depression Era. The woman is very down to earth, homey, and very sincere.
Put it that way.The time is the nineteen-thirties, and Ramblin' Rose is a movie you could see with anyone, who is an adult and appreciates a good movie.
It feels like a seventies movie for some reason..
Time Line is Off. If Buddy was 13 in the 30's (when the majority of the story took place), he would have been in his 50's in the 70's (when the story was supposed to end).
The grown up Buddy who appears at the end of the movie was MAYBE in his early to mid 30's.
Other than that, cute movie coming from a Southerner.
Usually, Im picky about movies taking place in the South.
Laura and Diane (real life mother & daughter) are cute in it together..
I haven't seen this film in a while and was somewhat sickened by a scene where the boy, played by Lucas Haas.
I doubt if we'd have such a warmly accepted film or any chance of making a mainstream movie about it at all..
Since I started looking at Laura Dern movies and heard so much about this one, rental stores didn't have it.
It's a story that, for that period of time, has probably been played out thousands of times in real life all over the country.
A young girl without a family to raise her in those times is a real tragedy, and Rose was doing the best she could..very lucky to even get the job and the home.
I thought that Rose getting into bed with Buddy and what happened then was totally unnecessary to help the movie.
The acting was really quite wonderful all around, and Laura Dern can absolutely steam up a room.
She was a bit dim-witted, but always quite endearing.And even this warm, feel-good, sweetheart of a film made me think...So here's the question: If a young adult woman gets into bed with a thirteen year-old boy, and then allows him to fondle her to orgasm, does that make her a criminal?
But every person commenting on the film (rightfully) loves Rose, and loves her motives.and consider this: Would there ever be a film where a young adult male gets into bed with a thirteen year-old girl, and where one or the other fondles the other to orgasm, and the film goes on to develop that adult male into a sympathetic character?
I was profoundly impressed and affected by the writing and acting in several scenes with Diane Ladd.
Otherwise, generally a good film and fresh.