Grace of My Heart

Allison Anders's 1996 film follows a fictional figure drawn loosely from Carole King's life. Edna Buxton wins a Philadelphia talent contest, renames herself Denise Waverly and heads for New York. She fails as a singer but lands in the Brill Building writing for other people, and the film moves with her through fifteen years of pop. Anders is not interested in chart positions; she is interested in a woman who has to put her own voice in other mouths, and the slow route back to a record of her own. Illeana Douglas gets the kind of lead she rarely got, surrounded by Matt Dillon, Eric Stoltz and John Turturro, with Martin Scorsese as executive producer. It played Toronto, opened in limited release and made little money. Who it's for: anyone curious about sixties songwriting factories and the years when women's creative work went uncredited. Who it's not for: viewers expecting the real names and the documented story; everything here happens under an invented one.