Customer Reviews

Rain

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Janey and her family spend their summers at their lakeside vacation home. The lake is a refuge for Janey and her little brother Jim. Janey tries teaching Jim to swim in the day, and at night, their parents parade them around as entertainment for their friends at their endless beach parties.

Janey seems to resent her mother and the way she treats her father. She realizes her parent's photographer friend is more than a friend to her mother...much more. Janey begins to fixate on the photographer and offers to be more than his photography subject which she ends up paying for dearly.

This film is directed by Christine Jeffs and is her first feature film. She has won awards for her Television Commercial Direction which is understandable in the film Rain through her use of slow motion photography. There are several slow motion shots that filter in and out of the film giving it a surreal yet creepy feel.

The pacing is comfortably slow and feels right for the story. The plot unfolds naturally and pulls you in for a gentle ride that unexpectedly becomes thrilling towards the panicked end. Janey is so easy to fall in love with. Her emotions are human and easy to relate to and I felt like I understood her to the core.

Actress Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki plays Janey and captured my heart with her honest performance. Her performance is very impressive, especially considering this is her first feature film and she comes across as an experienced natural. Aaron Murphy plays the little brother and he is precious and real. The casting for this film is right on and makes this character driven movie 5 stars.

This film is based on the novel Rain by Kirsty Gunn. This is one of the first times that a movie was more impressive than the book on which it was based. ...

Set during a lazy summer holiday alongside the New Zealand coast RAIN explores the dynamic relationship between mother and daughter. Thirteen-year-old Janey is entering adolescence when her primary role model, her mother, is frequently drunk and engaging in infidelity acts. Torn between swimming and fishing with her younger brother Jim and imitating her mother's actions Janey appears to have a duel persona throughout the film. While watching over Jim during one of her parent's loud music and booze parties Janey manages to sneak alcohol and cigs while spontaneously kissing boys. RAIN does an admirable job in exploring how Janey explores her new devious side influenced by her mother along with her devoted love to Jim. Unfortunately this DVD lacks any special features and as previously stated by another reviewer I fail to comprehend the significance of the title (or maybe I'm thinking too hard). Although a couple of the plot developments were predictable it didn't deter too much from my enjoyment of this film. RAIN is a worthwhile film as Janey's troubles easily transcend national borders and is relevant to both girls and women across the globe. Enjoy!

I've only seen this film once, but once is enough to proclaim this flick as my new all-time favourite! The cinematography and location of the film in scenic New Zealand is absolutely and positively phenominal, and that alone would have anyone gazing in amazement at the simplistic beauty and phenominal nature of the film narrated by the main character: Janey. Simple, beautiful, natural, and amazing - four elements of a wholesome and gratifyingly delicious story of life, old/young love, jealously, adultery, escape, guilt, imagination, sorrow, regret, innocense, and death, amongst a broken family of four attempting to tape together the pieces - all in perspective through the eyes of a twelve year old..... Now you do the math! Two thumbs, and Five Stars for a movie that's 'as right as rain': )

I'm not quite sure where this film got its title, seeing as though I don't think it rained once throughout the whole thing. But who was noticing? 'Rain' is a powerful coming-of-age drama that centers around 13-year-old Janey. Janey seems to have a great relationship with her little brother, but her relationship with her parents is flawed. In the scenes where Janey catches a glimpse of her mother getting up-close and personal with the family photographer friend, Cady, she doesn't seem at all surprised. Her mother drinks most of the time, but isn't a mean drunk. She just downs a few at all the beach parties they throw at the house, and runs off into the bathroom to committ adultery with Cady, all while her husband looks on sadly. He doesn't look all that surprised, either. At the parties, Janey is just the drink-server, and usually gets a sip of alcohol from whatever Cady is drinking. Her mother sees this, but doesn't do too much about it. A lot of this film is like this. This family has the worst communication skills I think I have ever seen in a movie. And while all of this is going on with her mother and the photographer, Janey herself is coming to grips with her own sexuality - there is a local boy who obviously likes her, but she just toys with him by kissing him, then ignoring him. She doesn't like him, but she doesn't tell him that. Again with the bad comminication.

This is beautiful film - literally. Filmed in New Zealand, the scenery is magnificent. Even if you didn't enjoy the story, you would certainly enjoy the view. The performances are all wonderful, especially Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki, who plays Janey. She is a remarkable young actress who will go places. However, despite the fact that it's good, it is not at all a cheery film. After a while, you begin to sense that something bad will happen. You don't know when, and you don't know what, you just know that stories like this don't usually have happy endings. But that's why movies like this are better than your average blockbuster film. This is more like real life.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this movie. I expected something of the Lolita kind of movie, but it turned out to be something completely else. Truth is that there was a 13-year old girl and much older guy involved, but the story certainly didn't evolve around that. It was basically an excerpt from a young girl's life and some of the most important moments of her life fall into that 'excerpt'. A summer that changed young Janey's life forever. One of the most important moments of the movie was when Janey told her father in front of her mother that "she [the mother] has him wrapped around her finger" and other truths about her mother and her behavior; and then stands up and leaves with her mother wanting to follow her when the father stops the mother and says "leave her, she's growing up". At that moment you can feel how pathetic the whole situation in which the family finds itself is, how well Janey knows what is going on and is disturbed by it - how she's turning from an innocent child into an adult feeling the weight of the reality on her unexperienced shoulders - that all is toppled later in the movie. It is a movie about growing up, about loss of innocence, about need for a better communication among people, about the need for 'caring for other people, not only yourself', about problems that need solving....about life.
This is a real life movie.
Great performances, great New Zealand scenery, perfect music. Thumbs up to Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki.

This is the first and perhaps least known of a spurt of great girl films from Down Under, highlighted by Alicia Fulford's delightful performance. The other films, of course, were Rabbit Proof Fence (Everlyn Sampi) and Whale Rider (Keisha Castle-Hughes). This Oceanic "Girl-Trilogy" gives us a great perspective into the region's three primary ethnic groups: Europeans, Aborigines, and the Maori.

The female director of Rain apparently used to make music videos, which show in the fine cinematography and soundtrack. The film often looks grainy and distorted, which helps to evoke a mood of hazy memories of a childhood summer vacation.

The storyline appears to borrow heavily from Satyajit Ray's 1955 classic Hindu cinema debut, Pather Panchali. But it builds upon that base admirably with the added thematic dimensions of Janey's flowering feminine beauty and her family's unfulfilling bourgeois life, all framed beautifully with the marvelous cinematography and score.

I have a hunch that in 5-10 years when all the glow comes off the other famous film trilogy from New Zealand, these three neglected feminine tales will all be viewed as superior films. Why wait for the masses, enjoy this film now!

Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki gives a phenomenal performance. From what I understand this is her debut film, but I fully expect to see her in more movies. The acting in Rain is superb all around, but so much of the movie rests on Fulford-Wierzbicki's shoulders. She creates a believable, complex character.

Special note also goes to the young actor who portrays her brother. There is a very real bond between the two characters, rarely are sibling relationships shown this realistically.

The film is also very beautifully shot. Many well-composed, strikingly-lit shots linger long enough to really appreciate them. This is a very leisurely paced film, yet the characters are so compelling that it never becomes boring. Give this movie a shot if you enjoy character studies.

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

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.

With a role models like her boozed out, partying mother and her slightly pathetic father who looks on while his wife carries on with another man, young teen Janey, explores her burgeoning sexuality in all the typical ways that can spell trouble. Being an adult means emulating her mother and as much as Janey despises this woman for her constant escapism through alcohol, her grasping need for sexual attention from a photographer acquaintance and her blatant disregard for her husband, she finds herself participating in all of the activities she has already defined as destructive to her family as a unit. After stumbling upon her mother embracing the photographer, Janey practices her kissing with a boy for which she has no feeling. She gulps down liquer she is supposed to be serving to adults at a party. She convinces her mother to alter an adult dress to fit her less developed body and places herself in the path of her mother's love interest, the photographer, whenever possible. Like her mother, she eventually shirks the responsibility of caring for her younger brother, leaving him to run wild on the beach while she doggedly pursues the photographer.

As in all such cautionary tales , such actions have a price, and Janey and her family pay a dear one.

Director Christine Jeffs uses slow motion photography and black and white sequences to highlight the more significant moments of this film. All in all, the film captures the confused angst of adolescent Janey as she lives through a summer that will change her entire life.

Recommended to those who are in the mood for a serious 90+ minutes spent in the mind of a young and troubled girl.