Grace of My Heart

Dir: Allison Anders

1996

*****

Allison Anders's Grace of My Heart is one of my favorite films from the mid-nineties and one of the decades' most overlooked films. Although the story and it's characters are fictional, it is clearly based on very real movements, trends and careers. Illeana Douglas' Edna Buxton/Denise Waverly, a career best performance, is clearly based on the life, work and career of Carole King. John Turturro plays a Phil Spector type character, Eric Stoltz's is similar to Gerry Goffin (King's first husband and lyric writing partner), Matt Dillon's a cross between Brian Wilson and his brother Dennis Wilson and pretty much everyone else can be linked to a real person or act that once graced the famous Brill Building in New York. From the Pre-fab birth of the Pop group to the California Sound of the sixties, Grace of My Heart covers the life and times of a influential era in music. Each performance is exquisite and the script is perfect. The accompanying soundtrack is as stunning as it should be given the story, with many a Brill resident taking on writing duties. The film is edited by the great Thelma Schoonmaker and it's executive producer is none other than Martin Scorsese but all credit to Allison Anders for it's dream-like direction. It's a fictional account of a very real story and probably more reliable than most biopics made of the the people and music of the time. Over shadowed upon release by Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do of all films, it is criminal that this film has been so overlooked and underrated for so long.