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.)

None of these approaches are wrong – though this movie’s version of the indie drama is borderline insufferable, forcing Layne and Nicholls-King to over-emote through their big confrontation. But the different moods could probably all work together in concert, under the right, delicate circumstances. Instead, Dandelion often feels like it’s running through its different options discretely, like watching an excerpt from one movie, then doubling back to see it again in a different style. At times, this oscillation feels close to savvy. Riegel captures some stunning images on 16mm film, like a reflection of Casey in the shine of Dandelion’s guitar, or the way the camera curves around the winding roads, trailing the pair on Casey’s motorcycle. Unlike Carney’s frequently platonic treatment of creative kinship, Riegel allows passages of carnality to weave into the narrative – which she’s not shy about then undercutting with more barbed confrontations.

Layne plays these different notes beautifully, even if her miming of playing actual notes on the guitar is, ah, perhaps a bit overemphatic. Riegel trusts in the striking intimacy of watching two people try to work something out in real time, whether it’s a song’s proper chorus, what they actually mean to one another, or all of that at once. Or rather, she trusts it to a point. More conventional turns await the movie and its lead, and if they’re intentionally jarring, designed to break that musical reverie, Dandelion still adds up to slightly less than the sum of its parts. In taking care to depict as much disappointment and frustration as heedless creative joy, the movie shunts some of Dandelion’s breakthroughs off-screen. It ends with a triumph that almost seems unaware of the degree to which Dandelion’s story hasn’t quite figured itself out.

Director: Nicole Riegel
Writer: Nicole Riegel
Starring: KiKi Layne, Thomas Doherty, Melanie Nicholls-King, Brady Stablein, Jack Stablein
Release Date: July 12, 2024

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.