Detrás del sol

One of the favorites at the Sedona Film festival. Hoping this important film gets a broad distribution. Outstanding performances, well written, everything comes together in a powerful yet disturbingly emotional manner. Cheadle's kitchen scene was phenomenal. Must see!

It was such a painful movie, I don't know how to describe it. All I can say is that it was so well done that I was almost forced to watch it. I couldn't bring myself to change the channel. It was well written, well acted and well directed. Kim Dickens and Gabriel Mann did an astounding job portraying the victims. I could feel Sherri's pain like it was my own and I felt pain for Owen, as well. The only thing I felt could have been done differently is that Owen was just as much a victim as Sherri was. He was just a child at the time of the rape. How can he have been held responsible for something he didn't want any part of and was forced into by his sociopathic brother? He suffered for it, too. I understand why Sherri had trouble dealing with him up to a point but it seems that everyone involved forgot that he had been a defenseless child, too. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who's ever been a victim or knows a victim.

The good parts of this movie, apparently inspired by a true story, makes me wish it was better as a whole. Kim Dickens is great as a troubled singer still haunted by a gang rape as a teenager. Don Cheadle as her manager and ex-lover has stereotypical characteristics, but gives a very good performance (his final words and expression in the scene with the writer was classic). Eric Stolz is excellent as well. And, the scenes at the music magazine was interesting, if incomplete. The whole movie, however, also has an incomplete feeling to it. The passion and message is there, and the brutal honesty about rape and its effects on all involved valuable. Nonetheless, the movie drags too often and often feels incoherent. Also, the writer is a rather pathetic character, and I got tired of him mighty fast. A better script would have made this movie much better ... as is, it is a worthy misfire.

I tend to prefer character-driven movies with strong plots. In that sense, this movie score highly. Kim Dickens turns in a passionate performance as a self-destructive women trying to reclaim her soul after it was taken from her in an adolescent rape. Don Cheadle turns in yet another great performance. Wow, what a great actor. Eric Stoltz has little screen time, but he does a lot with it. Again, what a great actor.

This movie suffers a little on the technical front. There are scenes that could have been edited out because they failed to enhance the story line. At times the direction seemed to be a lackluster. Neither of these hurt the movie that much, but it does not quite reach its full potential. It is still worth seeing. I enjoyed it.

This got and Emmy and Independent Spirit nomination for Don Cheadle, and an Indy nomination for Kim Dickens, who plays Sherrie, a rock singer in Cocoa Beach, Florida who was raped. Cheadle is her manager and former lover.

Sherrie doesn't know why her life is messed up, and why she can't move out of a life of promiscuity and drunkenness, because she has repressed the rape. Owen (Gabriel Mann) knows about the rape, and is doing a story on the girl behind the song she wrote. He is doing it because he was involved in Sherrie's rape. He has demons of his own to exorcise.

This was a powerful story of how a teen rape can cause permanent damage, not only to the person raped, but to everyone in her life from that day forward. The dysfunctional relationships that one experiences through life can be traced back to that rape.

The ending was a little to pat, but that's movies.