Rambling Rose (1991)

100% of critics liked it
(18 reviews)
41% of users liked it
(2,386 ratings)

Rambling Rose is the most part a flashback, related by grown-up Southerner Buddy Hillyer (John Heard). The bulk of the film takes place in 1935, when rambunctious backwoods housekeeper Rose (Laura Dern) virtually invades the Hillyer household. Daddy Hillyer (Robert Duvall), a bed-rock Southern… More Rambling Rose is the most part a flashback, related by grown-up Southerner Buddy Hillyer (John Heard). The bulk of the film takes place in 1935, when rambunctious backwoods housekeeper Rose (Laura Dern) virtually invades the Hillyer household. Daddy Hillyer (Robert Duvall), a bed-rock Southern gentleman, welcomes the congenitally amoral but basically goodhearted Rose into his house, carefully fending off her ill-timed romantic advances. But Rose can't help feeling smitten with him; meanwhile, she has also drawn the attentions of 13-year-old Buddy (Lukas Haas). Based on the novel by screenwriter Calder Willingham, Rambling Rose was not the box-office breakthrough that many expected for director Martha Coolidge; though it fizzled financially, the film did manage to secure Oscar nominations for both Dern and her real-life mother Diane Ladd. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 55 min.
Directed By: Martha Coolidge
Genres: Drama, Comedy

In Theaters: Sep 10, 1991 Wide
On DVD: Mar 16, 1999
Studio: Live Home Video

Critic Reviews

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
It's a beauty.
Hal Hinson, Washington Post
[A] funny, moving, spectacularly acted little film.
Desson Thomson, Washington Post
Willingham, who also scripted Paths of Glory, Little Big Man and The Graduate, wrote Rose in the early 1970s. Thanks to these sterling performances almost two decades later, his screenplay enjoys a fresh and tender blossoming.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
The movie is all character and situation, and contains some of the best performances of the year, especially in the ensemble acting of the four main characters.
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com
Seen in a flashback through the eyes of an adolescent, this uncommon coming-of-age tale, which raises poignant questions about the mysteries of sex and love, flaunts a superb performance from Laura Dern as the promiscuous girl
Rob Thomas, Capital Times (Madison, WI)
A quirky, funny but moving story with terrific performances all around.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
Probes the mixture of fear and awe many men experience when they meet the life-force of women.
Stephen Farber, Movieline
A modest but pleasingly adult entertainment at a time when even the most promising American films ultimately revert to Pollyannaish platitudes.
Brian Webster, Apollo Guide
A touching, humorous and enjoyable film.

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Dean M

This unusual coming-of-age movie is charming, warm, witty and full of delightful surprise about a naive but sexually uninhibited girl arrives in an old-fashioned Southern household and soon has all the men in the family, indeed in the town, in a tizzy.