Sexual awakening

Exceptional study of a young adolescent girl negotiating the rapids of sexuality in New Zealand in 1972. Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki stars as Janey, a teenage girl who hankers after the hunky local photographer who has had an affair with her mother.

The slow-burning drama is played out against an exquisitely photographed and conspicuously liquid landscape, which enhances the ebb and flow of the narrative while symbolising the sexual tension during the overheated, stormy summer of the story's setting.

Director Christine Jeffs (who is currently filming the Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath movie Sylvia) reveals a talent for playing the natural world off against the human struggles in an unforced way that is reminiscent of early Jane Campion (An Angel at My Table).

Rain
Cert: cert15