Things Behind the Sun

Writer and director Allison Anders, who used the world of rock & roll as the backdrop for her films Border Radio, Grace of My Heart, and Sugar Mountain, returns to the music scene for this tale of a woman struggling to come to terms with an emotionally devastating past. Sherry McGrale (Kim Dickens) is a punk-influenced singer and songwriter whose angry, deeply personal music has begun to win her a national following, though the demons that fuel her art are playing havoc with her life, as she drowns her sorrows in drugs and alcohol and fills a growing police blotter with arrests for disorderly conduct. Sherry is winning significant airplay for a song about the brutal rape of a young woman, and rock journalist Owen (Gabriel Mann) convinces his editor Pete (Rosanna Arquette) to assign him a major story on Sherry when he tells her he knows the truth about Sherry's own rape as an adolescent, which inspired the song. Owen is forced to run interference with Chuck (Don Cheadle), Sherry's manager and former boyfriend who is fiercely protective of his fragile client, but Owen is still able to meet with the singer. However, Owen finds that Sherry either can't or won't remember most of the details of the brutal and degrading assault, and she doesn't want to discuss the heavy toll it's taken upon her. Influential experimental rock group Sonic Youth contributed several original compositions for the film's score; Sherry's singing voice was provided by Kristen Vigard, who performed on the soundtrack of Grace of My Heart.