Rain

New Zealand writer-director Christine Jeffs drenches the lives of a decaying, vacationing family in fetching earth tones as traumatic domestic drama builds with pitch-perfect understatement before squeezing into a somewhat telegraphed finale of moral comeuppance. A bored, booze-saturated mother (Sarah Peirse) and her independent-minded 14-year-old daughter (Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki) walk a sexual tight rope on polar ends of womanhood as the males of the family (a disheartened husband and his wee son) watch helplessly from the sidelines. The communal object of desire is a photographer (Marton Csokas) who docks his boat near the family’s beach house and joins the local party scene. The acting is excellent and the issues here are simultaneously intimate and universal.