Bernadette Peters has the kind of Broadway razzmatazz you rarely encounter in this age of small, dismal slice-of-life independent films. Here she’s cast as a failed musical actress, Diane, whose razzmatazz is being sorely tried by a small, dismal life in Nashua, NH.
Director and co-screenwriter Lisa Albright uses Peters to lend some needed verve to a pretty standard, down-market milieu. Diane swans around the house in tight-fitting dresses, burbling snatches of show tunes — that is, when she isn’t succumbing to bouts of suicidal depression.
The character is as broadly drawn as one you’d find in a MGM musical, but entirely recognizable to anyone who’s spent time on the far margins of showbiz. She’s barely holding on to reality, or even acknowledging it.
But Diane can still turn on the charm — both for her 15-year-old daughter Alice (Rachel Brosnahan) and for Charles (Peter Friedman), the collections agent who falls for her when he’s sent to get her back rent.
Alice’s caretaker role, and the too-soon choices it brings, are the focus of the movie, including a subplot about a teenage friend (Reyna de Courcy) sliding into criminality. But Brosnahan keeps her character’s devotion to her mother both believable and affecting.
It’s a pity, then, that “Coming Up Roses’’ swerves into a third-act twist that’s both an indie cliché and dramatically unnecessary. Diane and Alice didn’t need to be upstaged.