Falling From Grace

Thomas Wolfe told us "You can't go home again," and people who have never read a word of his novels remember that warning, perhaps because it is so obviously true. And still people try to go back home. In "Falling from Grace," John Mellencamp's powerful first film, a country-rock star returns to his small town in Indiana, hoping to throw back a few brews and hang out with his old buddies at the pool hall. It doesn't work out that way.

The Mellencamp character left more than memories behind in Indiana. He also left an alcoholic father (Claude Akins), whose idea of an ideal male role falls somewhere between patriarch and rapist.

And he left behind an old girlfriend (Kay Lenz), who has now married the hero's brother but who has spent a lot of years thinking the singer should have taken her along when he left for the big time.

John Mellencamp, of course, is a rock star who comes from Indiana himself, and often goes back there - so often it is unlikely "Falling from Grace" is autobiographical except in its broadest and least personal outlines. What he has done, I imagine, is to combine Larry McMurtry's uncommonly good original screenplay with his own small-town insights, and the experiences of all sorts of other people he's met or worked with on the road. They all come together in this story where old wounds never heal.

One of the strangest truths about high school reunions is that all of the old jealousies and resentments of years before are still remembered so clearly; the people who sat together in the school lunchroom now sit together at the reunion banquet, as if the years in between haven't made a difference. We get that same sense of wounded memory in the opening scenes of "Falling from Grace," as Mellencamp's private plane arrives at the local airport, disgorging the singer, his wife (Mariel Hemingway) and his entourage.

Word quickly gets around town that Mellencamp is back, and it is especially quick to reach Kay Lenz, the sister-in-law. The situation resembles, I suppose, a script from "Dallas" or "Dynasty" (returning rock star still feels chemistry with sexy old flame, now married to his brother), but McMurtry doesn't write it that way. His screenplay is too intelligent, and too observant.

Kay Lenz has many of the best scenes in the movie. She plays a woman who has achieved some degree of material comfort (she lives in one of the best houses in town), but no psychic or emotional satisfaction. She fools around all the time, and everyone in town knows it, and she doesn't care that they know.