Illeana Douglas, Matt Dillon
Douglas, an heiress from Philadelphia's Main Line, moves to Manhattan in 1958 to make it as a pop star. Her dream is to both compose and sing her own material, but producers aren't interested in her voice. She settles for being a songwriter in the famous Brill Building, once home to Carole King and Phil Spector, and turns out hits. This part of Grace of My Heart is lighthearted and quick, and Douglas (To Die For), who has the elegant yet gawky charm of a duckling not quite grown into a swan, is a charmer. At some point, though, writer-director Allison Anders must have fallen asleep. Then Judith Krantz sneaked into the room and finished off the script in grandiose soap-opera fashion. Douglas's love life goes disastrously wrong. She marries Dillon, who plays a mentally unstable rocker. He wigs out, and so does the movie. When Douglas finally sings a meandering ballad summing up her heartache, she sounds more like Barry Manilow than Joni Mitchell. (R)
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