Talkin' 'Bout

By RICHARD CORLISS

With rock 'n' roll, a generation of kids declared themselves cultural orphans. They told their perplexed parents, "We don't sing the same language. Yours is repression and responsibility; ours is energy and anarchy. Rock music is a code you'll never understand. It takes us higher and deeper than you could ever hope to go. And so you have nothing to teach us. We're tuned in. You butt out."

These could be the lyrics to the life of Patti Rasnick (Joan Jett), a guerrilla soldier in the rock revolution. Patti's rifle is a Gibson guitar; her army is a Cleveland band she fronts called the Barbusters; and her enemy is Mom (Gena Rowlands), who drives Patti bats with her meddling, consuming love. Patti seceded from the family when she had a son out of wedlock. "I wanted something she had no part of," Patti tells her brother Joe (Michael J. Fox). Joe, the Barbusters' lead guitarist, is peacemaker in the Rasnick war, but sometimes he feels like a hostage to both sides. And in this family, one of the warring parties will have to die for the other to surrender.

Light of Day, like many of Paul Schrader's scripts (Taxi Driver, Hardcore, Cat People), uses a strong, simple story to anchor a metaphor for social, familial or sexual relationships. But here he is so true to the characters' desperation that he deprives his film of the electric juice rock 'n' roll lends to much more routine movies. And he is so keyed into the cliches ordinary people use, both to express and to hide from their feelings, that he presses all irony out of the dialogue. This does pay off in two climactic hospital scenes where the raw exposition is nicely translated into emotion: Patti whispers anesthetic incantations into her mother's ear, then offers revelation and forgiveness as a kind of requiem prayer. Mostly, though, the plot motors along with the same predictable churn as the new Bruce Springsteen song that gives the movie its title.

Fox, the elfin yuppie of TV's Family Ties, wears an earring and says naughty words but still looks as cute as a Disney toy. His fans won't forgive this film; they will ignore it. Rowlands, when she finally gets the chance, locates strength and heartbreak in her harridan matriarch. But Jett, rock star in her first movie role, is terrific. A sign in Light of Day reads PERFORMANCE IS A REFLECTION OF ATTITUDE. With her melodramatic dark eyes and mesmerizing surliness, Jett has the attitude and gives the performance. Try watching someone else when she is on screen. Can't be done.