Jessie Buckley in Wild Rose (Neon)

Director Tom Harper’s opening scenes of Wild Rose are reminiscent of the early Scottish films of Lynne Ramsay and Danny Boyle, with a grungy look at the incarcerated and underemployed in Glasgow. However, the social realism soon dissipates into a familiar fantasy that is lifted by actress Jessie Buckley’s charisma.

Rose-Lynn Harlan (Buckley) leaves jail, retrieves her two resentful young children from her salty mother, Marion (the ever-welcome Julie Walters), and briefly hooks up with a tattooed ex. She seethes under her parole conditions, including having to wear an electronic bracelet that goes off if she’s not home by her 7 pm curfew.

The tone starts to shift surprisingly when Rose-Lynn dons cowboy boots and a fringed jacket to head for her old stomping grounds, a bar grandiosely named Grand Ole Opry, with its desultory country band and a few older two-steppers. But the explosion of her pent-up anger prevents her from getting her old job back fronting the band. With her mother insisting she take any employment in order to regain custody of her kids—the country star-named Lyle and Wynonna—Rose-Lynn resigns herself to cleaning house for rich folk on the other side of the tracks.

Rose-Lynn lets everyone know of her determination to be a country music star, and any grittiness pretty much ends there as the movie starts crossing into fantasy land. She channels her ambition into moving with her kids to their own flat by working in the Big House, where she rousingly sings along with the classic country songs in her headphones. Her boss, Susannah (Sophie Okoneda), overhears her, and she’s charmed into helping Rose-Lynn achieve her dreams.

Susannah enthusiastically takes on a Lady Bountiful role and arranges Rose-Lynn’s first-ever trip to London to audition for a legendary disc jockey, Bob Harris playing himself. The travel entails amusing and multiplying crises. Still, she is starstruck and thrilled to sit in on a live set by Grammy nominated Ashley McBryde. (The music the DJ champions actually seems more subdued singer/songwriter material than the bluesy, boot scootin’, honky-tonk that Rose-Lynn belts out.)

The fantasy further escalates with Susannah’s GoFundMe-type event to benefit Rose-Lynn and heads toward Billy Elliot–in–Nashville territory. Rose-Lynn evidently hasn’t seen or read much about the business of country music, or is even much aware of contemporary commercial hits that have come out of Music City. Fortunately, Nancy Taylor’s script protects Rose-Lynn from disaster and the worst clichés by having her develop her own Loretta Lynn–inspired creative expression. (The Glaswegian screenwriter also wrote some of the songs.)

With Rose-Lynn’s passion crossing seemingly every subgenre of country music, Buckley is bursting with a force that outshines a familiar story by putting across any country song with verve.