Like Sunday, Like Rain

Eleanor works in a cafe in New York and is fired. The same day her boyfriend, who has a band, throws her out of the flat. She sees an advertisement: somebody is wanted to look after a boy for the summer. Reggie is twelve, plays the cello and composes. His mother is always travelling, the apartment is enormous and the child is alone. Eleanor had studied music and gave it up. The two of them spend the summer walking the city. Reggie talks like an adult, Eleanor meets again the thing she abandoned, and the summer ends. Frank Whaley wrote and directed. Leighton Meester plays Eleanor, Julian Shatkin plays Reggie and Debra Messing plays his mother. Billie Joe Armstrong, the singer of the band Green Day, plays the boyfriend. It is an American production. The matter it treats is talent against class; both characters are musicians, but the way is open for one of them and not the other. The film builds no romance between them and stays faithful to that choice to the end. Reggie's way of speaking is not realistic and the film does not hide it. The narrative does not make New York a postcard; the locations are ordinary. Music is used inside the story and the compositions carry the characters' state. The ending is a parting and promises nothing. The narrative is small in scale; the plot is thin and the film rests on its two actors. Whaley came from acting and this is one of his few films as a director. Its limit is pace; the narrative is still, the dialogue artificial, and the dramatic weight light. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet independent drama and summer stories. Who it is not for: it is still, uneventful, and the ending sad.