Grace of My Heart (1996) Movie Review & Film summary, Cast

I’d been eager to watch this since hearing one of Burt Bacharach’s songs for the film, “Unwanted Number”, on the radio; I figured even if the film was lightweight the music might be good. As it was, the film was lightweight and the music was good (but I only heard three bars of “Unwanted Number”!). Allison Anders’ approach lacks pep and depth, and eventually the film reveals its lack of anything really incisive or dramatic to say about pop culture factories or its characters. Kept a grip thanks to good acting from Illeana Douglas and especially John Turturro. Material that might have provied a wealth of ironic termite art, like the subplot involving a Lesley Gore-esque closted bubblegum singer (Bridget Fonda) came to absolutely nothing, giving us instead an extremely shallow conflation of two of the Wilson brothers instead.