‘Yellow Rose’ Film Review: A Young Immigrant Finds Her Voice in Routine Indie

Well-intentioned drama skims the surface of its heroine’s experience as a would-be country singer trying to stay clear of ICE

Yellow Rose
Stage 6

There’s no faulting “Yellow Rose” for its good intentions, but this tale of a young Filipina teen finding her voice as a country artist (while dealing with her immigration status) almost always feels like it’s skimming the surface of a deeper story.

Documentary director Diane Paragas makes her debut as a fiction filmmaker, and while she and cinematographer August Thurmer certainly achieve verisimilitude in their Texas locations — the flatness of Bastrop, the city lights of Austin, the bright stage of a honky-tonk — the screenplay by Paragas, Annie Howell (“Claire in Motion”), and Celena Cipriaso tells the story in the broadest strokes possible, and the lack of specificity undercuts the film’s impact.

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