On Criterion, I watched Grace of my Heart, a 1996 comedy-drama written and directed by Allison Anders, and loosely based on the career arc of Carole King as a 1960s songwriter creating pop hits for girl groups before coming into her own as a solo artist. The film starred Illeana Douglas as Edna Buxton, a Phildelphia steel heiress who wins a talent contest as a singer-songwriter, and the prize is a record contract, but after nearly a year in New York City, she hasn't gotten anywhere with her career. A studio producer tells her that "girl singers" are not currently trendy in the music business, and advises her to write for others to make a living. She is led to record producer Joel Milner (Joh Turturro), who renames her "Denise Waverly," invents a blue-collar persona for her, and has her re-work her song for a male doo-wop group (played by the 90s R&B group Portrait), and it becomes a hit.
She become a songwriter in the Brill Building, a famed office building where songwriters wrote pop hits in the early 1960s, and after a rocky start, she begins dating and later marries the songwriter Howard Caszatt (Eric Stoltz), and brings in her friend Doris Shelley (Jennifer Leigh Warren), whom she met years earlier as a fellow contestant at the talent show, and Denise writes a song for Doris and her friends to sing as a girl group, called the Luminaries. Denise and Howard write a song called "Unwanted Number," based on a girl's unwanted pregnancy, and the film has an interesting sequence that shows Denise with Doris near the fire escape where the girl, who got pregnant at 12, is telling her adolescent boyfriend and is struggling with being a mother so young, and that moment goes back and forth with Denise and Howard crafting the song, like Howard thinking it's more poetic for them to be under streetlights, while Denise says it's more "urban" for them to be on the fire escape. (The film doesn't question how Denise as a white woman is writing songs for Black music artists and becoming successful off of them, often having Doris and the young girl, who later becomes a babysitter for Denise's child, as her friends instead of focusing on their stories). The song is banned from the radio, but the controversy brings the attention of radio DJ John Murray (Bruce Davison), who brings the songwriting duo on his show and is supportive of Denise's career.
The film follows Denise's career and her two marriages, to Howard (who she leaves for being a cheater) and the surf-rock singer Jay Phillips (Matt Dillon), who she struggles with because of his mental health issues and substance abuse disorder. She becomes friends with a fellow songwriter, Cheryl (Patsy Kensit), and I liked how the film subverted expectations with making it seem like she was going to be a sexy threat to Denise's marriage, only for Cheryl to not already be married to her writing partner, but that their friendship becomes close and outlasts both their marriages, that felt more positive for portraying female friendship and not jealously or rivalry between them.
The film struggles with the lip-syncing scenes whenever Denise or any actor being dubbed over performs, because the dubbed voices don't sound anything like the actors' voices, and the lip-syncing is too obvious and takes me out of the movie. John Turturro's character has awful facial hair, where he would look better without it, and the film relies on costuming to boldly let the audience know what time period they are in, as the film story spans from 1958 to 1970. I was distracted by hearing Sonic Youth's "Little Trouble Girl" play in a scene as a song that Denise and Cheryl wrote for a bubblegum 1960s TV show, because even though vocalist Kim Gordon is evoking the Shangri-La's talk-singing style for the song, I immediately recognized it as a song from the band's 1995 album Washing Machine, and I couldn't see it as a 1960s fictional song the songwriters had made.
There are obvious pastiches and references to real-life musical artists of the 1960s era. Jay Phillips is modeled off of Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys, with his eccentric musical tastes and personal struggles, and Bridget Fonda has a fun cameo as a Lesley Gore-esque young singer, who is a closeted lesbian with her "roommate" Marion (Lucinda Jenney), and Denise and Cheryl write a queer-coded song for her called "My Secret Love." There is a musical act based off of the Everly Brothers, and the record producer Joel Milner is a mix of Phil Spector and song published Lester Sill.
Illeana Douglas is great in this movie, and in her career, she has often played supporting roles, like sisters (To Die For, Stir of Echoes), sassy best friends (Picture Perfect), or quirky art teachers (Ghost World). She's rarely gotten to lead her own movie, and she's really charming and wonderful to watch in this film, holding it together even when the pieces seem a little messy.
Director Allison Anders made the fantastic 1992 film Gas Food Lodging, a coming of age film centered on a single mother and her two teen daughters living in a trailer park in New Mexico. She drew upon her own history of sexual assault to make 2001's Things Behind the Sun, about a musician struggling with the long-term aftermath of rape. She is almost 72 now, and largely works in TV now.
I'm glad I watched this, because it seemed like an interesting movie, but I hadn't come across it now, so I'm happy that Criterion added it this month for their "Girl Bands" programming on streaming.
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