Falling From Grace

Mellencamp plays singer Bud Parks, returning to his hometown of Oak City, Indiana, for his grandfather's eightieth birthday. Bud has brought his glamorous "California wife," Alice (Mariel Hemingway), and young daughter to meet the Parks clan, and what a dysfunctional brood it is: there's sister Sally (Deidre O'Connell), who's married to the hard-drinking, frequently absent Mitch Cutler (folksinger John Prine, in a fine, low-keyed performance); father Speck (Claude Akins), somewhat estranged from his famous son and known for his way with women; and Speck's illegitimate son Ramey (Larry Crane, Mellencamp's real-life bandmate). As if things weren't incendiary enough, Bud's brother Parker (Brent Huff) is married to PJ (Kay Lenz), Bud's former high-school school sweetheart.

Bud's return to his hometown sets off all sorts of long-held hostilities and rivalries. Mitch resents Bud for his "handouts," Speck is both jealous of and cold towards Bud, and PJ seems eager to rekindle their romance. She tells him, matter-of-factly, that she's having an affair with Speck, and seems just as eager to start something with Bud. Eventually Bud and PJ do have a brief fling, and Bud begins to be drawn back into the smalltown world he left to become a star. His ambivalence about his fame leads him to consider giving it all up and staying in Oak City, and he extends his visit to two weeks there, from the originally scheduled three days. Bud's plans for a possible life with PJ are derailed, however, when she tells him she would have married him if he'd asked her, but he's now "16 years too late," and she's content to stay married to Parker while having affairs on the side.

Speck, meanwhile, means to add another woman to his collection, and makes a pass at Alice, who bonks him on the head. She begins to suspect Bud's infidelity and soon returns to LA with their daughter. Bud confronts his father after Alice tells him about Speck. They have a fight in a diner, and Bud, now drowning in self-pity and smalltown nihilism, tries an old high-school stunt: "riding the cage," in which he's strapped into a metal cage in the back of a pick-up truck, and dumped onto the highway while the vehicle is speeding along the road. Bud is badly hurt, and while he's recuperating in the hospital, Alice comes to see him, hinting at a reconciliation.

FALLING FROM GRACE does a good job at capturing the stifling feeling of small town life; virtually every Oak City denizen is either resigned to spending the rest of his or her life there, or trying to blot out this inevitability through alcohol or sex. Thanks to the authenticity of Larry McMurtry's screenplay, and Mellencamp's surprisingly competent direction, the film is more compelling than it might seem from the above description. At the same time, it would have been more effective if Mellencamp's character had been fleshed out: we've seen this brooding rock star type a million times.

Mellencamp, as if to prove he doesn't need to perform to hold our attention, never sings in the film, so we're given no reasons for Bud's success; one scene, where he's sitting on a porch aimlessly strumming a guitar, is a tease. Bud might as well be a movie star or a famous author--the film never takes advantage of his musical background to illustrate the talent that enabled him to escape a future of chicken farming. Likewise, we never learn why Bud would even consider abandoning his hard-won fame (not to mention a genuinely loving family) to go back to Oak City, whether it be self-loathing, restlessness or the inexorable pull of his smalltown roots. (The closest the film gets to this is PJ's comment to Bud that "nobody ever controlled you and nothing ever stopped you.") FALLING FROM GRACE hints at some of this, but a little more depth and insight would have helped this promising first effort. (Violence, profanity, brief nudity.) leave a comment