Watching Alison Anders's frustrating and rewarding Grace of My Heart -- the story of a female singer-songwriter and her struggle through the trends and tribulations of the late '50s through '70s -- I found my mind drifting to that hilarious Monty Python Beatles parody, The Rutles. In both instances the music sounds uncannily like the real thing, but it's completely wrong. The point in The Rutles was satire; in Grace -- with a soundtrack dimly echoing pop voices from the Everly Brothers to Natalie Merchant -- things are less clear.

Probably Anders intended the film as a celebration of a period and a philosophy -- that talent and the creative impulse will win out. In which case she has cast her heroine well: Illeana Douglas as Denise Waverly/née Edna Buxton looks like a svelte Cabbage Patch doll, and her demeanor ranges from elegant wit to Mary Tyler Moore-style hysterics. She needs it all to endure the endless melodrama of the script. The daughter of a haughty, dismissive dowager, stranded in New York trying to sell her Patti Page appeal in the era of male-dominated rock and roll, battered by her doomed affairs with beatnik songwriter Eric Stoltz, music critic Bruce Davison, and brilliant, Brian Wilson-like wacko Matt Dillon, she becomes not only a survivor but a compelling, believable character.

However soapy on its own, each episode accretes to grant this seemingly tawdry movie a sly strength. With a funny/sad turn by John Turturro as a music-company mogul and a gauzy candy-colored look that evokes the era, Grace endures the pressure of a director who takes things a little too much to heart. At the Nickelodeon and the Janus.