For all the music acts that have broken into mainstream fame thanks to social media, countless others have surrendered their aspirations on the road to making it big. “Dandelion,” the sophomore effort from writer-director Nicole Riegel (“Holler”), observes the impromptu romance and creative synergy between two musicians on the precipice of giving up. The evocative visuals here sing in unison with the characters’ yearning to fulfill the promise of their lifelong dreams. They are chasing a glimmer of light before twilight.
Tired of singing in a Cincinnati hotel bar to an audience for whom she is no more than background noise, singer-songwriter Theresa (KiKi Layne), stage name Dandelion, travels to South Dakota for a competition to be the opening act at a major event. Though she fails to land the gig, she meets Casey (Thomas Doherty), a Scottish man in town to play with his old bandmates. The archetype of the scruffy indie musician, Casey is sensitive and a dashing gentleman, but also drags some unresolved skeletons along with his guitar. For her part, Dandelion harbors conflicted feelings about sacrificing opportunities to care for her ailing mother. An argument early on establishes the turbulent bond the two women share.
Intermittently, Riegel plants pointedly truthful instances elucidating the dire odds creative people — be they musicians or filmmakers — face to make a living out of their passion. Dandelion scrolls social media frustrated at the constant reminders that musical ability isn’t a sufficient qualification to break through in an oversaturated landscape. Casey confesses he left the band to pursue a more stable career, while one of his longtime friends explains she recorded an album independently and released online for free in hopes of getting attention. Acknowledging the improbability of bringing those goals to fruition lends the film a sobering honesty.
A nascent attraction rapidly escalates to a torrid fling, as Dandelion decides to stick around for a week and perform with Casey’s band. On his motorcycle, the two of them travel to the outskirts of town to mine inspiration from the vast sky. Enamored with the textures of the area’s rocky formations and how the warm autumnal sunlight falls on its ochre-colored landscapes, cinematographer Lauren Guiteras crafts ethereal, sun-kissed frames. One striking sequence captures Dandelion in stark silhouette. There’s a sensuous quality to the hues that grace the terrain and how they interract with the lovers, even if on the editing side some of those moments of riding or walking in nature overstay their welcome.
As a musical romance, “Dandelion” falls short of the Irish “Once,” a comparable picture about two struggling musicians who fall for each other as they create stirring songs together. Still, Riegel’s actors ignite a convincing spark when sharing the screen. One sees the blistering force of their connection in the piercing intensity of Doherty’s perpetually melancholic stare, and in Layne’s effortless soulfulness when interpreting the personal verses of their compositions. They are not singing for an audience, but just for one another, sometimes as duet and others as if in a duel. Riegel’s casting choices do plenty to captivate, even when the director takes them into a few emotionally contrived situations.
Composed largely by twin brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National (the former has of late become one Taylor Swift’s closest collaborators) in tandem with Layne, the tracks Dandelion and Casey perform capture the spontaneity of their amorous liaison, one that burns bright and just as quickly fades. Yet, it seems unlikely that any of them could have the staying power of the Oscar-winning “Once” song “Falling Slowly,” or even Jessie Buckley’s “Glasgow” from “Wild Rose,” another film in the same thematic bracket. The lyrics reflect how each part perceives the other with the limited time they have spent together, and of Dandelion’s relationship to the hometown she ran away from.
Thought “Dandelion” steers away from an idyllic resolution, choosing instead drama that pushes the heroine to self-reflection, Riegel doesn’t entirely avoid falling for expected narrative turns, which traps the movie somewhere in the space of not being entirely unoriginal but simultaneously overly familiar. Where it diverts from similar tales of tested perseverance is in addressing Dandelion’s experience as a woman, more precisely as a Black woman, in a genre like folk rock which is less welcoming to someone like her. Inspired by Joy Oladokun and Tracy Chapman, among others, Riegel communicates this glass ceiling with photos of male performers decorating a guitar store, and later includes images of their female counterparts as a way to assert their presence.
Through a somewhat effective montage intercutting the title character’s recent heartbreak and foundational memories, the filmmaker states that Dandelion’s talent isn’t dependent on who is tagging along for her ride but what’s ingrained within her. It’s that instance of thoughtful, if unverbalized recognition about her own worth that elevates “Dandelion” above the noise.
Source Agencies
