Rambling Rose (1991)

I haven't seen this film in a while and was somewhat sickened by a scene where the boy, played by Lucas Haas. was fondling Rose's genitals. It's strange how everyone romanticized this. Now that he's grown up, he loves the sweet memories of early blooming manhood. But what if the sexes were reversed? What if the family had a butler named Ross and a young girl wanted to fondle his genitals? I doubt if we'd have such a warmly accepted film or any chance of making a mainstream movie about it at all.

Laura Dern is sort of underrated, maybe that is because Miss Dern has commingled movie acting with TV roles. If she is not obviously a knockout, physically, then no I don't understand that view, since her pulchritude scores right up in the top BABE percentage as Kidman, Ryan, and the late Anna Nicole Smith. The Jurassic Park scientist who bounded across the compound running for her life(and Sam Neill) has the best legs of any actress in my mind. Laura Dern's acting competence is right up there at her feminine attractiveness.Different from the very popular Jurassic Park. The less well-known comedy/drama is typically the old(1991) tape or DVD some person has back in a closet underneath a bunch of old videocassettes, eight-tracks, and various other old media. It belongs on a shelf next to Annie Hall or Beaches. 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. But has a taste for good loving. 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.

If you grew up Southern you always have a thing about Hollywood actors trying to put on a Southern accent. 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. (So how to explain Robert Duvall, who grew up in San Diego? 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.

Screenwriter Calder Willingham adapted his own book about a wayward young woman in 1930s Georgia who comes to stay with a rural family, quickly setting her lustful sights on the family patriarch. 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. The writing is decidedly bland, opening with a woeful prologue, and one never gets a sense of character development or transition. 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. ** from ****