Like Sunday, Like Rain

When Brooklyn waitress Eleanor has a sudden break-up with her fractious boyfriend, she needs a new job and roof over her head as soon as possible. She lucks out finding a position as live-in nanny to precocious, privileged Reggie who lives in a luxurious apartment on the upper west side of NYC. Both characters deal with their dysfunctional family backgrounds by maintaining reserved exteriors, and this unusual small-scale film portrays the developing relationship between a blue-collar young woman and the neglected twelve year old.

The story begins slowly and continues at a leisurely pace throughout. Although nothing very dramatic occurs, their bond gradually deepens as they spend time with one another and discover a common interest in music. Leighton Meester and Julian Shatkin give nicely observed performances in the lead roles, but the script doesn't give them anywhere especially interesting to go, although there are some emotional ripples when Reggie accompanies Eleanor back to her upstate home due to a family crisis. Their story eventually arrives at an understated conclusion.

I enjoyed very much this story: the encounter of Eleanor and Reggie.Leanore needs a work and a place to stay, Reggie is a solitary music prodigy, who lives quite alone and he has had troubles with his former caretakers.Then appears Eleanor and little will grow a friendship: both are musicians and then a relationship with a lot of tenderness and affection. This film is also about self-improvement: Eleanor will discover again her pleasure to play music. The performances of Leighton Meester and Julian Shatkin are really very good.

17 February 2016. There are reasons this movie might be an "eight" instead of a "seven," but there still remains the inherent fundamental weakness in its very attempt at qualitative greatness. What so great about this movie is its avoidance of the pretentious, mainstream dramatic plot outline that directs the pacing and acting and plot of the entire story. Like Sunday, Like Rain dismisses such pablum for an excellent independent style movie narrative. Yet it is the very attempt of this focus on independence that part of the story seems to lose. Unlike Lost In Translation (2003) where the focus is almost required by the story to be exclusively on two people, Frank Whaley directs his own script with a number of characters several of which seem to have some importance to the story but don't seem to get be developed very well nor tied up very well. In short a number of characters are introduced and them dumped. With Room (2015), the nature and the focus on two primary characters being the essence of the story can command the entire movie when necessary. Even years before Richard Dreyfus's Mr. Holland's Opus (1995), his portrayal in a multi-layered duo character movie The Competition (1980) regardless Dreyfus's worse actor award notwithstanding review how consistently engrossing and emotively appealing a movie can be.

There are always some mysterious things about human beings that cannot be clarified. Some people get along for a lifetime but never know each other. Some people can penetrate each other in the moment of meeting. It's like the tearful line in the movie, "It's really hard to believe that I have only been with you for a few months, and it feels like I have known you all my life." Yes, this movie has a very strange, alternative, and even unclear emotional line setting. A wealthy little boy with an IQ and EQ that surpasses his age and a downcast nanny. When they get along for a few months, they have developed an unprecedented and thorough mutual understanding between them. It is a friendship that transcends age and exceeds friendship. Closeness, and something like extreme love that can never be defined as love. This film has brilliantly dismantled all the definitions of stubbornness, so that those well-defined secular concepts are completely invalid in front of these two people.

10/10 Masterpiece. Some are calling this melancholy, but I think bittersweet is a better word. Above all, it's a story about a 12 year-old music prodigy being played by a c. 12 year-old acting prodigy. As good as child acting has gotten, few if any could have pulled this off as well. What's the significance of 12? It's that age where you're as mature as you're going to get before the onset of puberty. But what if your emotional maturity and profound awareness outstrip your physical growth? It's about resigning yourself to your solitude, until.... The result is a bittersweet gulf between two otherwise kindred souls. This isn't about dramatic friction, it's about something distinctive, enigmatic and fleeting. It's like playing a beautiful tune on a cello in an empty swimming pool with good acoustics. It's like Sunday, like rain.

Maybe the best "child" performance ever.