TV Reviews : An Imaginative ‘Search for Grace’

“The Search for Grace” runs against the grain of most prime-time movies, cloaking the mysterious present in a haunting sense of the past.

A young woman (Lisa Hartman Black) is periodically hurled into fainting spells when she hears the sound of rushing water or sees a pair of spiky, high-heeled red shoes. They are images from the life of another woman long dead who, under the opening credits, we see thrown over Niagara Falls by a murderous lover (Ken Wahl).

Are network movies growing up, shedding their tiresome dependence on true-life headlines for something different? Well, not too different--even this fantasy carries the TV movie holy mantra: “Inspired by an actual case history.”

At least “The Search for Grace,” directed by Sam Pillsbury and written by Alex Ayres, advances the cause of imagination. It’s the ticket for viewers who like time-lapse mental trips, stories that deal in hypnosis and (pardon the psych-speak) “delayed stress syndrome.”

Those who admired the 1980 theatrical motion picture “Somewhere in Time” with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour should like this movie, although be forewarned: This journey (in which “Grace” stands for both an epiphany and the name of the past-life victim) is not about rekindling an old incandescent love; it’s about the mistakes we all keep repeating.

* “The Search for Grace” airs at 9 tonight on CBS (Channels 2 and 8).