MOVIE REVIEW

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

Based on the David Armstrong novel, "The Rising Place" is a deeply felt but flat and unimaginative rendering of a young woman coming of age in the Mississippi Delta as Pearl Harbor looms. By then Laurel Holloman's white, titian-haired Emily Hodge has embarrassed her rural parents (Tess Harper, Gary Cole) and scandalized the community by becoming pregnant by a soldier who's soon off to war. Although she agrees to give her baby up for adoption, Emily refuses to go away or seclude herself during her pregnancy. After the war, Emily's lifelong best friend, Wilma (Elise Neal), an African American teacher, persuades her to take a stand against racism as the civil rights era looms.

The film unfolds in the present as the dying Emily (Alice Drummond) is comforted by her niece Virginia (Frances Fisher), who has just uncovered a cache of letters that reveal her aunt to have been a more courageous and unconventional woman than the content spinster schoolteacher she has known. Emily, in turn, reveals without bitterness a cruel, ironic secret.

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Certainly there are possibilities here, but writer-producer-director Tom Rice is too pedestrian a filmmaker to bring any edge or personality to "The Rising Place" that would set it apart from other Deep South stories. The film's strongest assets are its actresses, who include Frances Sternhagen as Virginia's mother, S. Epatha Merkerson as Wilma's mother and Beth Grant as a kindly cafe owner. (Jennifer Holliday performs several songs of her own composition, and one can only wish she had had a real role.)

The ability of women to support one another, even across racial lines, gives the film its strongest moments, yet even tragedy, injustice and loss are undercut by "The Rising Place's" impenetrable coat of sentimental nostalgia.

"The Rising Place": Rated PG-13 for elements of violence. Exclusively at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.