Rain

Affecting, troubling, dazzling film.

The visual beauty of the film, rather than distracting from the troubling story, makes it more troubling still.

A character who triumphs over a clumsy story line is a very rare creature. It takes a smart director and a sensitive actor to bring him to life, and to keep him breathing all the way through.

The cast of Rain is first-rate, especially Wierzbicki and Peirse, whose tense relationship is as loving as it is competitive.

Gorgeously evocative visually.

As it moves from the drizzly to the overly stormy, Rain freights a young girl's self-destructive eagerness to lose her virginity with so much danger and even horror that it's as if the events were trying to make up for the film's previous lack of drama.

The visual subtleties don't come to bear on the storytelling, unfortunately -- the dialogue is cumbersome, the simpering soundtrack and editing more so.