Grace Paley’s Stories Are Painted in Uneven Shades

Grace Paley is a writer with a smile waiting behind the frown. Things go bad in her stories, but they usually turn out well enough in the end.

Paley deals in delicate ironies, which means she risks getting sentimental when her characters turn the corner and realize their lives aren’t as mean, troubled or quirky as they thought. She usually pulls it off.

Filmmakers face the same problem when they bring her tales to the screen--keep the ironic flow but avoid mawkish backwash, that’s the challenge.

In 1983, directors Ellen Hovde and Mirra Bank ambitiously took on three of Paley’s short stories, putting them under one title, “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.”

The movie, which is uneven (pathos veers into bathos) but also revealing (Paley’s trademark insight into people is frequently evident), screens Friday as the latest installment in UC Irvine’s “Standing in a Different Light: No Longer Silent and Invisible, a Woman Seizes Her Moments” series.

John Sayles, a noted director and writer in his own right, adapted the three vignettes and clearly did his best work with the one called “Virginia’s Story.” Ellen Barkin stars as Virginia, a young New York mother (the women at the center of each episode are all from New York) deserted by her husband.

Left with three kids, Virginia must make do, something that often defines Paley’s beleaguered but self-sufficient heroines. At first, Virginia is depressed, then she turns angry.

Then she turns to an old lover (Ron McLarty), who sharply remembers when he needed Virginia so much he wanted to marry her despite the violent objections of his mother.

What happens next is largely made affecting by Barkin, an actress able to convey the vulnerability of the victim and the toughness of the born survivor all in the same moment.

As Virginia, she pushes ahead in realistic and small, celebratory ways and draws us in while she’s doing it.

The next best segment is “Alexandra’s Story,” featuring a middle-aged social worker (Maria Tucci) and a cabby (Kevin Bacon) young enough to be her son. There’s a predictability here, especially when Alexandra exhibits a motherly tenderness toward the cabbie, but its low-key aura (and mostly quiet performances by Tucci and Bacon) creates some gently appealing passages.

Despite its coy eccentricity, the least vivid episode is “Faith’s Story.”

Lynn Milgrim plays Faith, who visits her parents in an old-folks home. The characters are kooky--Faith’s parents wildly insist on divorcing each other, even though they’ve been together for years and years--but surprisingly uninvolving.

When the story ends with Faith at the beach wondering forlornly why she always has to be “responsible for everything,” the segment just expires, leaving barely a trace.

* What: Mirra Bank and Ellen Hovde’s “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.”

* When: Friday at 7 and 9 p.m.

* Where: UC Irvine’s Student Center Crystal Cove Auditorium, Irvine.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to Jamboree Road, and head south to Campus Drive, and take a left. Turn right on Bridge Road, and take it into the campus.

* Wherewithal: $2 to $4.

* Where to call: (714) 824-5588.

MORE SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Short Films From Latin America

(NR) This series, which runs through May, presents works that illuminate the lifestyles and heritage of Latin America. Films screening today deal with the change and conflict of Latin America. Four short movies--”Come Back, Sebastiana,” “Throw Me a Dime,” “Hope” and “Missing Children”--will be shown, starting at 7:30 p.m. Included with museum admission of $4.50 for adults, $3 for senior citizens and students and $1.50 for children age 5 to 12. Free for children under 5. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 North Main St., Santa Ana. (714) 567-3603.

Como Agua Para Chocolate

(Like Water for Chocolate)

(NR) This widely acclaimed 1992 Mexican film adapts Laura Esquivel’s novel of romance, passion and cooking and stars Lumi Cavazos, in Spanish with English subtitles. Friday at 7 p.m. in Room 313 of the Science and Math Building, Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo. Part of an international film festival sponsored by Saddleback College’s division of Liberal Arts and Associated Student Government. (714) 542-4788. FREE.

Everything Is Fine

(NR) This documentary uses a collage of interviews, home videotape and various styles of music to explore Jewish life in the post-Soviet Ukraine. Directed by Juri Chaschewatski, it screens Sunday at 9:30 a.m. as part of the Jewish Film Festival at the AMC MainPlace Six, in the MainPlace/Santa Ana mall. (714) 553-3535. $20.