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. The film has a good script and is well done technically. But it is first and foremost an actor's movie and the acting carries the movie along. Well worth your time. Recommended.

Buddy recalls the Great Depression when Rose (Laura Dern) came to work for his family. She escaped prostitution in Birmingham to be the domestic servant. Kindly mother Hillyer (Diane Ladd) is partly deaf and was orphaned young. Rose flirts with father Hillyer (Robert Duvall) but he rebuffs her. Young Buddy (Lukas Haas) has a sexual encounter with Rose. She is desperate to stay and convinces him to keep it a secret. She continues to be flirtatious with the town's men. Father wants to send Rose away while mother argues to keep her.

This is a nostalgic jazzy rambling reminiscence of a compelling character. My only problem is that this movie takes a light tone making this almost a fable. Despite the childhood point of view, it needs to go for a darker mood to fit this sexualized tragedy. Director Martha Coolidge is caught between making a kid's coming of age journey and a young woman's walk on a dangerous tight rope. The light airy mood keeps the darker material at a distance.

Which is a shame considering there was so much to like. 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. I find it irksome - and confusing. I would have preferred a different actor in that part a la Leslie Howard from the forties.

The sepia cinematography was breathtaking and the street scenes amazing as were the two actors who played the younger children.

The wraparound of the story didn't work at all. Rose deserved more that a verbal dismissal at the end. And the mother vanished inexplicably. Now there was a character. Too bad the viewer wasn't respected a little more.

6 out of 10 for all that.