Rain (2001)

In New Zealand, the teenager Janey (Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki), her young brother Jim (Aaron Murphy), her mother Kate (Sarah Peirse) and her father Ed (Alistair Browning) are spending their summer vacation in a seaside cottage. Janey takes care of Jim most of the time, teaches him how to have endurance under the water, and observes the behavior of her parents, whose marriage is near the end. Kate and Ed promote many parties in the house and mainly Kate drinks a lot. She is also having an affair with the photographer and owner of a boat, Cady (Marton Csokas). The confused adolescent, rebel with her mother and dealing with a growing sexuality, tries to act like an adult with tragic consequences to the family."Rain" is a great surprise, being a profound, powerful, nostalgic and sensitive coming to age and family drama. The impressive and very mature debut of the young actress Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki in the key role of Janey would certainly deserve a nomination to the Oscar if "Rain" were a Hollywood movie. The story is very simple and dramatic, but never corny, all the characters are very well developed though their personal dramas and the very convincing performance of the unknown cast is amazing and touching. This is the first work of director Christine Jeffs that I see, and I am very impressed with her sensibility and taste. The music score is wonderful, and the cinematography is indeed very beautiful. I would like to record my congratulations to the people involved in this little gem. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Chuva de Verão" ("Summer Rain")

I will admit firsthand that the main draw for me to this movie was Marton Csokas, who is quite possibly the sexiest man alive. That said, I will focus on the fact that this movie had me laughing and crying, entranced and disturbed. While some people like to focus on Janie's irresponsible (and troubling) actions leading to Jim's death, what about mom & dad? Why isn't anyone blaming them? I was a little bothered by the sight of a young girl seducing a grown man, yet the embarrassing desperation of the mother's need for sex with Cady was also difficult to watch. Janie, in my opinion, was a little girl who was jealous of her mom, and made up her mind to be more alluring to Cady. I thought all the cast was wonderful, but back to Marton. Can any man exude raw sex better than Mr. Csokas? I only know that just watching him kiss a woman got my heart racing, and I would have loved to feel those lips on mine. Overall, this is a movie filled with emotions of every kind, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

The acting (particularly by Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki) and cinematography of this movie are so well put-together that it makes the movie's horrible cliche of an ending that much more painful and embarrassing.(Here come the spoilers)Jim's death at the end of the movie is a cheap gimmick that director Christine Jeffs telegraphs from square one. It's a lame, moralizing made-for-TV-movie plot device that attempts to somehow punish the film's characters for their perceived moral transgressions (Janey and Jim's parents' drinking and Janey's experimentation with sex). By killing off Jim immediately after (or during, it's not clear) his sister's first experimentation with sex, the cast and crew of "Rain" come across as a bunch of holier-than-thou moralists. "This is what happens when innocent young children are left unsupervised so the adults can go off and drink and have sex," we can almost hear Jeffs saying while she wags her finger at her audience.It's not clear if Jim's death is something taken from Kirsty Gunn's novel or if it's introduced in Jeffs' adaptation. Whatever the case, Jeffs ought to have had the sense not to kill off Jim right after Janey's encounter with Cady. The final quarter or so of the movie should be about Janey coming to grips with her encounter with Cady. Instead, Jeffs rips the focus away from an uncomfortable subject by drowning Jim, after which she tries to tidy up the movie with a quick funeral and another cliche, the "driving home in a car after a tragic event" scene. "And after that summer, I was never the same," we can almost hear Fulford-Wierzbicki saying during the film's final voiceover.It's almost as if Jeffs is afraid to let Fulford-Wierzbicki act out her character's reaction to her sexual awakening, or to show her parents acting out their split on screen. It's an awful way to end a movie, and I can't recommend this movie to anyone but moralizing, condescending types who like nothing more than to see characters suffer for sins that are actually little more than character flaws.

This film was delicious to watch. Some of the cinematography was really striking, as were some of the cinematographic choices, such as the sparing use of very brief black-and-white shots. I also liked the depictions of children at play (one moment in particular: when Jim cavorts in the dimly lit front yard at dusk in semi-slow-mo in a dracula cape, in a sort of scene-change-sideshow-distraction, innocently echoing the ominous tone of the previous scene). The play really rang true, reminding me of my own interactions with my siblings. The relationship between the two children was endearing and a welcome relief from the other very draining relationships in the movie.I spent most of the film wondering whether a particular event was going to happen, and I felt that the few moments after it did happen near the end were the best of the film, UP UNTIL something else happened that I felt was a little over the top. The former event brought together the relationships that Janey, the young protagonist, had with all of the other characters in such rich, complex, achingly painful ways, it really left me in awe. It was a very strange experience, then, to have the second, over the top event happen not a minute later. I really felt this last event was unnecessary, and it cut me off from fully appreciating the best moment of the film.So, the first 94 minutes or so were really great, and the last three, while they did cut me off from my greatest moment of admiration, did not detract from the overall greatness of the film.