Hit So Hard

This eye-opening but disjointed documentary charts the life and hard times of Patty Schemel, once the drummer in Courtney Love's multi-platinum-selling band Hole, whose fall from grace and spiralling drug addictions led to homelessness and prostitution. Schemel guides us through her troubles in a series of contemporary interviews, interspersed with reams of home-movie footage she shot during her rock star heyday of the mid-1990s. Although he's been gifted an engaging and frequently hilarious subject, director P David Ebersole arguably spends too much screen time recapping the previously well-chronicled story of Love and her husband, the late Kurt Cobain, with Patty often reduced to a bystander. When the film does (eventually) focus of Schemel herself, it provides a fascinating insight into the pressures of the music business and a cautionary tale of life in the fast lane.