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There’s something about the color of a Texas sky that’s virtually impossible to capture on film: cotton-candy pink clouds set against an expanse of lilac blue at sunset, or the warm honey-orange glow that greets the day. Diane Paragas’ “Yellow Rose” reflects those rare hues in a way that tells you the writer-director once called Texas as home, and watching her story of a Filipina teen with a hankering for country music — which must be Paragas’ story too, at least in part — made this former Texan realize there are a lot of colors we don’t see in films about the Lone Star State.

Sure enough, Paragas grew up in Lubbock, Texas, birthplace of Buddy Holly, which is more than six hours from the live-music capital of Austin, although her young heroine lives just half an hour east in the tiny town of Bastrop. “Yellow Rose” was a...