KiKi Layne plays a singer-songwriter at a crossroads in ‘Dandelion.”
One wants to give the benefit of the doubt to “Dandelion,” a sweet, slight, impressionistic character study of a struggling musician with a luminous KiKi Layne at its center. The second feature written and directed by Nicole Riegel , it’s as handmade as the personal signatures in the end credits and as beautifully brooding as a movie can be with a score and songs by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the indie rock stalwarts. Does it add up to less than the sum of its parts? Certainly.
Layne plays Dandelion, who when we meet her is strumming guitar and playing her delicate original songs to a restaurant bar clientele that couldn’t be less interested. The setting is Cincinnati , and the sense is that wherever the action is, it’s elsewhere.
After one more argument, Dandelion impulsively gets in her car and drives west to South Dakota, where a biker festival is hosting a battle of the bands. Footsore and depressed, she connects with a friendly group of folk rockers — the real band Brother Elsey, led by brothers Brady, Beau and Jack Stablein, who play themselves. She’s also drawn to the group’s on-and-off collaborator, a lanky Scot named Casey .
Their collaborations around tent campfires, in back alleys or in impromptu jam sessions with the Stableins and friends are allowed to play out in full, and the aura of a supportive midnight community of fellow musicians is heady. The songs are spare, rising to impassioned, with flickers of fiddle giving them body, and the Dessners’ background score is similarly charged with a sense of tender melancholy.
The problem is that there’s just not a lot of there there in “Dandelion.” The pace is leisurely to observant to slow, and even beautiful swooning gets tiresome after a while. Doherty gives his character shades of kindness, mystery and unreliability, and it’s never quite clear whether the heroine is naive in matters of love or just thirsty after a long drought.
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