KiKi Layne Sings Songs of Beauty and Frustration in the Music Drama Dandelion
There are any number of ways to approach the basic material of Dandelion, and the movie tries at least three. This might be intentional for a film about the creative process; singer-songwriter Dandelion (KiKi Layne) certainly understands how a composition can change with shifts in rhythm, tempo and instrumentation – and how it can be hampered by a lack of options. As the movie opens, Dandelion (a stage name; those close to her know her as Theresa) is suffering from exactly the latter. She has a recurring gig singing at a hotel bar, where she occasionally tries slipping her own songs in between covers like her hushed version of “Hey Jealousy,” but almost all of her money goes toward taking care of her sick mother (Melanie Nicholls-King). Early on, she must sell her beloved electric guitar; then she writes a song about the loss, and no one at the bar can be bothered to look up from their phones or conversations.
Dandelion has a bit of a phone problem, too; writer-director Nicole Riegel is smartly upfront about the fact that a struggling musician who has seen others go on to greater success would probably spend a not inconsiderable amount of time hate-scrolling Instagram. (Hey jealousy, indeed.) After a particularly bad (and not particularly well-written) fight with her mom, Dandelion impulsively drives from her native Cincinnati to South Dakota, where a biker gathering is holding a contest with a high-profile opening gig as the prize. She doesn’t win, but she does meet a gaggle of raffish, nouveau-folk musicians (played by members of real-life band Brother Elsey), and winds up connecting with their sometime bandmate Casey (Thomas Doherty), who has recently blown back into town.
Dandelion enters a kind of kindred-souls reverie with her new maybe-more-than-friend – and so does Dandelion, as it winds its way between clunky indie hardship drama, and something more lyrical that connects songwriting to the natural world. A third iteration of the movie also emerges: the kind of musical-process romance favored by writer-director John Carney. Dandelion and Casey actually head into the studio at one point, attempting to bottle their creative chemistry, and like a Carney project, the movie often lets songs play out in full, like a lo-fi musical. (Also like Carney, the music is almost aggressively tasteful in its soulfully rootsy accessibility.)