WILD ROSE (15)

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman but it's harder to be a woman who sacrifices her long-cherished dreams of fame for her children, in director Tom Harper's uplifting drama of creative strife and self-empowerment.

Blessed with a stellar lead performance from Irish actress Jessie Buckley, Wild Rose resets the rags-to-riches of A Star Is Born to the mean streets of Glasgow with a toe-tapping country music twang.

For the opening hour, screenwriter Nicole Taylor seems to be following frequently plucked chord structures of the genre, composing obstacles that the spirited heroine must overcome if she is to deliver a barn-storming performance on the stage of The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

In its final verses though, Taylor's script confidently subverts expectations and propels the lead character in an unexpected direction without feeling convoluted or contrived.

Genuine emotion reverberates in every frame, most obviously whenever Buckley stands at a microphone and rips out her protagonist's heart like every great country songbird.

the film's theme resonates with its lead, who has been chasing her dream since she was a teenager, when she first came to public attention on the BBC talent show I'd Do Anything.

Now 29, she has roles in War And Peace, Taboo and The Last Post, as well as the award-winning film Beast, under her belt, but she still remembers that fear.

"It's really scary to want something for yourself," she says.

"When you have a passion and a dream or a sense of wanting to reach for something, it's like falling in love.

"You risk a bit of yourself and you have to risk that, otherwise you are just going to coast in life and not really exist.

"When I first read Wild Rose, it was like I had been plugged in by an electric current.

"It felt like it was a female prison break film with all these outlaws and this character in the middle of it who is just this tenacious firecracker, who is very human in all of that, and complex.

"It felt like I know those people and I just felt so excited about her, and her bravery and courage just blew me away.

"Usually, as a woman, you get offered parts where there's a sheen over who you are as a woman and you're not allowed to be imperfect.

"But Rose-Lynn was human and wasn't perfect and I totally related to that. At its heart, the film is about ordinary people doing something extraordinary, against the odds.

"It's about people that have been marginalised by society, and told they can only exist in that corner - which, for Rose-Lynn, is on an estate, which is being in and out of prison, which is having kids when she was very young, working in the bakers.

"They may dream of going somewhere else, but they never have the opportunities or the courage to go grab their dreams."

Indeed, Rose-Lynn's mother Marion, played by Dame Julie Walters, would much rather see her daughter get a stable job to support her children than jet off to Nashville.

Rose-Lynn gets a job as a cleaning lady to fund the trip, where she meets the wealthy and bored Susannah (Sophie Okonedo) who hears her singing and wants to help.

"What was brilliant was it crossed all social boundaries," Buckley says.

"For Susannah, I felt the film was like a prison break for her too, to break out of her domestic sphere.

"Susannah's got a hunger to live a life that is human and connected and that's what Rose-Lynn and Susannah give each other."

The soundtrack is crammed full of original songs, including one penned by Oscar-winning actress Mary Steenburgen, and others by Buckley and writer Nicole Taylor.

"The lyrics of country are extraordinary," Buckley says.

"The good songs in country are 'three chords and the truth' and they really have a way of getting right into your soul and pulling it out.

"Rose-Lynn is such a fireball of emotion and one of the songs, Outlaw State Of Mind, has got such attitude and is like a Janis Joplin rock out.

"That is the art of Rose-Lynn's character, and it is such fun to play. But then at the other end of the spectrum, you have the song Peace In This House where the lyrics are a lullaby to her children.

"As much as Rose-Lynn is scared that she is a mother and that she has kids and she has love for them, her way of expressing that is through song. That enables her, in that one moment, to dive into that scary pool.

"Then the song Glasgow is the first time her mum ever hears her sing really, and she has written this song to her mum, for her mum, saying 'Sorry', saying 'Thank you, I love you, I am you, and we are a family'."

Indeed, Glasgow's role in the film is much more than just a song title. The film was largely shot in the city and Buckley moved to Scotland to perfect her Scottish accent.

"I worked with a dialect coach for a few months and then I just bottled myself into Glasgow like a month before we started shooting and relentlessly, and probably unashamedly, went around speaking in a Glasgow accent hoping that I would get away with it.

"I was also drinking a lot of whisky in a pub with an impressive selection of bottles. That is really what I did."

How did the locals respond to her accent?

"They were fine, they didn't really bat an eyelid. I was like, 'I'm getting away with it!'"

Rating: Four stars