A movie to watch with girlfriends NOT a boyfriend
Added 7/30/2008
The casting for this movie was spot on - but the actress who played 13 y.o. Janey shined the brightest. Yes, it is another coming of age story but this one hits the mark. It's about growing up in the 70s. It's about a girl hating her mom and yet, trying desperately to be just like her. But most of all, it is about endurance - just holding on.
The film is slow paced and fits the mood of the lazy days of a 1970s summer. Add lots of booze and marital boredom, mixed together with sexual awakening and you have a disaster just waiting to happen. Janey's flirting with the same man as her mother has dire consequences in so many ways.
The whole "rain" metaphor and using it as a title struck me as too film project but since it was this director's first film, she deserves a lot of credit for making a film that strikes a hard emotional truth.
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merits beyond own age groups
Added 2/2/2008
Lost by bored parents-holidaymakers' kids-about six year old boy and in-young-teens girl-explore a world around them on merits far beyond their age groups.
If something good in this movie, it is Aaron Murphy A redhead boy-brother's performance, of whom death makes a film being a viewing targeting spiritual course-goers rather than a realistic cinematographic work: in a real life so shallow departures from Ten Commandments bear so extreme consequences rarely.
2 out of 4 people found this helpful.
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Why oh why do I insist on watching film adaptations of books I love?
Added 5/27/2007
Rain (Christine Jeffs, 2003)
It seems that in every set of reviews I write, there's one book or movie that just gives me fits. Rain, in this batch, is it. I watched it, I digested it, I mulled it over, I compared it in my head endlessly to Kirsty Gunn's far superior novel, and when I was done with all that, I had squadoosh.
It's not that Rain is a bad movie, really (though I'd thought, until the very end--where the movie uses a Big Reveal to show us the novel's opening scene--that the filmmakers had sufficiently deviated form the novel that I'd be able to really rip this apart), it just doesn't really distinguish itself in any way. It's a typical coming-of-age tale, centering around Janey (Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki), a New Zealand girl who begins discovering her own sexuality at the same time her mother (Sarah Peirse) starts an affair with a handsome photographer (Marton Csokas, recently of AEon Flux) who lives on a nearby houseboat. Coming-of-age tales can be spun in any number of ways, from the erotic to the horribly embarrassing, but Jeffs and co. don't focus on any one long enough to allow it to grab hold. (Judging by the blurbs on the back, I'm pretty sure they were going for erotic; they succeed in a few places, one in particular standing out, but it's certainly nothing special in that regard.)
The one thing that really stands out about the movie is Fulford-Wierzbicki, who does pretty well at playing a confused adolescent, and is drop-dead gorgeous besides; she's got a mighty career ahead of her with a bit of craft-honing. It's too bad everything else around her is so bland. ** ½
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Thirteen Year Old Janey is a Victim of Sexual Abuse
Added 1/7/2007
This is a film that literally sees little wrong with child molesting. And no, I'm not even slightly exaggerating. It is also bizarre that I am the sole reviewer to point this out. Janey is only a 13 year old teenager. She is indeed rather mature for her age. Nonetheless, Janey is too young to legally allow a fully grown man to have sex with her. Such an adult male (or female) is clearly breaking the law. Janey is the daughter of a woman who is selfish and undisciplined. The father is being played for a fool. This dysfunctional family seems doomed. Janey's younger brother needs her love and protection. Is she capable of handling this responsibility? Will matters finally get out of control? "Rain" is morally bankrupt. The story line takes place in New Zealand. Perhaps the people associated with the American TV program "To Catch a Predator" and "Perverted Justice" should visit this country.
David Thomson
Flares into Darkness
2 out of 11 people found this helpful.
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Rhymes with "Lame"
Added 6/4/2006
This paint-by-numbers New Zealand film is a rote Coming-of-Age / Adultery flick in which a family living by the seaside is put in moral jeopardy by a handsome stranger. Throughout the film, I kept asking myself how the parents in this nuclear unit could spend so much time at their dream house without working a steady job. Instead, it appears that everyone involved has far too much time on their hands and found that drinking themselves into oblivion will only do so much to ease the boredom.
Yes, Mom (Sarah Perise) has a booze problem and the hots for the boat-bound stranger (Marton Csokas). Meanwhile, Dad (Alistair Browning) sits cuckolded in the back yard sipping hard liquor. Their two kids (Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki and Aaron Murphy) don't have healthy hobbies either; spending their time cutting private parts out of porn magazines and taping them to their bodies. I suppose there is a lot of "higher meaning" going on between these "adult parts" and the lemon tree that grows in their back yard. However, I really wasn't inclined to dig deep in this overly glossy film whose plot and ending were visible from the onset.
Director Jeffs muddies her water with an overabundance of slow motion shots, drawing out the tedium of RAIN. Instead of treading new ground, the film provides the audience with trite morality and one-dimensional characters.
8 out of 11 people found this helpful.
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