Film Review: Yellow Rose

For a film that writer/director, Diane Paragas, has spent fifteen years trying to get off the ground, it feels like a film that was tailor made to be experienced at our current time and place. It’s a story about what it means to be American, about the experience of growing up balancing one’s heritage with the opportunities that the country offers, about what the authorities put undocumented immigrants through. Even as I write this, still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants and asylum seekers are still held in detention centers, and many of the families that were separated are still not reunited.

Our lead, an undocumented Filipina teen named Rose Garcia (Eva Noblezada), finds herself in a somewhat similar situation. While going out with her friend, Elliot (Liam Booth) to see country singer Dale Watson perform in Austin, she comes home right as ICE agents take her mother, Priscilla (Princess Punzalan). Thankfully, her mother has prepared for this exact situation, leaving behind some papers and instructions for her to go to her estranged aunt Gail (Lea Salonga). Sadly, Gail’s white husband doesn’t want Rose around, resulting in her leaving. She ends up working and living in the bar she visited with Elliot.

However, while Priscilla faces deportation, circumstances prove to be continuously difficult for Rose as ICE agents are doing raids, making her move once again, this time being taken in by Watson, playing himself. In his home, she finally finds some comfort and safety. It also provides an environment where she is encouraged to tap into her love for country music. With the music she writes with Watson’s help, she is given a chance to fully and openly express herself in ways that she is unable or perhaps doesn’t have the courage to in her everyday life.

Diane Paragas explores big, heavy ideas through a very intimate lens, one that is focused squarely on character as we follow Rose’s journey through all the changes that her life keeps throwing at her. Rose is a compelling lead, one that is very easy to root for, despite how her stubbornness and refusal to be a victim or a burden can get in the way sometimes. Eva Noblezada, who is fresh off her second Tony nomination for her performance in the 2019 Broadway production of Hadestown, is spectacular here, effortlessly carrying her first film role like a movie star in the making.

Throughout the film, I was reminded of last year’s excellent Wild Rose, and not just because because the word “Rose” is in the title. Both films explore the power of country music as a way to work through and provide a release for personal struggles. The genre is very much rooted in the experiences of outsiders, and the idea of the perseverance of the American spirit, despite all the challenges that one faces, both internal and external. That spirit is kept alive here, through these characters, and through the situation that they and many people are continue to face today.

The film features some wonderful music, often aided by Noblezada’s tender but powerful voice. It also helps that Dale Watson showing up as himself brings a fun dynamic that the filmmakers use in a way that’s smart and well utilized. It’s beautifully made as well. The way the landscapes and quaint Texas towns are captured bring a sense of yearning and a subtle sense of danger and uncertainty. The writing from Paragas and her co-writer, Annie Howell, generally avoid going too heavy-handed with the theming, but they also do not shy away from the realities of the situation.

Yellow Rose could be seen by many as a film “of the moment,” but there’s more to it than just its unintentional timeliness. It’s an engaging and thoughtful slice-of-life picture that explores an experience in a way that is full of seemingly authentic details and a strong emotional throughline, which could have been rendered over-the-top under less delicate hands. Eva Noblezada delivers a star-making performance that carries you through the tumultuous journey with maturity and vulnerability. It’s ending might frustrate because it doesn’t answer all the questions one might have and hope to follow through on, but to me, it rung true in just how you never know what tomorrow brings, and that the best thing you can do is face it and keep going.

Yellow Rose is now out in theaters.