The Rain Has Stopped

An Anna Taborska Film

The Rain Has Stopped

A Film by Anna Taborska

Review by Jason D. Brawn

To summarize The Rain Has Stopped: A painfully shy double-glazing vendor becomes highly frustrated during a bad day, and soon vents his anger on a young and vulnerable housewife, which changes both their lives. 

Director Anna Taborska, who has won awards for her short films, made this fifty-five minute tale about the misfortunes of a door-to-door salesman, who slowly descends into madness.  Anna is also a brilliant and highly-talented short story writer and poet of the macabre, whose work has been featured in The Horror Zine and countless volumes of Charles Black’s excellent Black Book of Horror anthologies.  

For certain, Anna knows how to make a film. Watching this film clearly demonstrated her strengths, in terms of its visual style, editing and direction. With a perfect sense of mise-en-scene, Anna has brilliantly established lots of tension in this film. 

I tend to be technically-minded, so what I enjoyed best about this film was the arrangement of the lighting: different in each person’s house to help capture their personality. For example, the lonely girl who tries to seduce the salesman lived in a house that was blue (the colour of cold, sadness and quite possibly loneliness), the naked couple’s house was pink (the colour of frivolity and naughtiness), the elderly lady’s house, who kept a dead pigeon in the kitchen, was yellow (the colour of disease and sickness), and the abusive husband’s house was red (the colour of violence, anger and blood). Something just as striking about these scenes was while following David’s departure, the colours of each house returned to normal.  The director had successfully managed to inform the viewer of David’s frame of mind. 

Other technical brilliances were the close ups of the cat and the tilted/angled frames, trying to unbalance David’s mind, which were designed to make the viewer feel uncomfortable. Anna can really, really make a film and possesses superior knowledge of the kind of look she wanted to capture in this film.

That is not to say that this film was completely without flaws. I feel the script could have benefitted from some trimming. If I were to make this film, I would consider having David be a door-to-door preacher, descending into a mental breakdown because no one was taking him seriously, and meeting Janine would have changed it all for both of them. Perhaps when the husband came home and suspected them of having an affair, something horrific were to happen. I would have made Janine’s husband physically abusive, instead of the abusive neighbour (in the earlier sequence), and made her and David run away together.  

I liked the characterisation of Janine, the housewife – a longsuffering French woman, who is mentally abused and mocked by her arrogant husband, but the other character of David reminded me a little bit of Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) and at the start of the film he was rather engaging: the naked wife and husband, who wanted him to participate in their sexual games, and getting lots of cold responses from Janine’s neighbours. Then his journey seemed to prolong for most of the film, and here is where it could have benefitted from some trimming. 

However, I did enjoy the film, especially the point of views of both characters (Janine and David) and the film did carry some suspense that was central to the film.  Her visual style had a reminiscence of  Roman Polanski's earlier work, which gave me a creepy feel and sympathy with the central characters. 

A good premise and a well-made film from a rising star of horror, and I hope she continues to make more and more films.

See a video clip of The Rain Has Stopped HERE.

Director: Anna Taborska
Producer: Sevy Ali
Executive/Co-Producers: Halina Taborska, Azmat Ali
Editor: Crispin Green
Screenwriter: Anna Taborska
Director of Photography: Graham Nye
Production Designer: Ellen Green
Sound: Martin Stewart
Music: Jaroslaw C. Kucharczyk
Principal Cast: James Harwood, Marie Cordillot, Dee Phillips, Barry Lee-Thomas, Wendy Cooper, Sam Connelly, David France, Craig Campbell, Christine Bradshaw, Louisa Kalwarczyk, Melinda Whiting, Beryl Nesbitt, Scott Morton, Boleslaw Taborski
Production Company:
Bizmane Entertainment

Buy the DVD directly from Anna here:

annataborska@hotmail.com

About the Filmmaker

Anna Taborska

Anna Taborska was born in London, England. She is an award-winning filmmaker and writer of horror stories, screenplays and poetry.

Anna has directed five films, and worked on seventeen others, with actors such Rutger Hauer, Scott Wilson, Noah Taylor and Jenny Agutter. She was also involved in the making of two major BBC/NBC TV series: Auschwitz: the Nazis and the Final Solution and World War Two behind Closed Doors – Stalin, the Nazis and the West.

Anna’s film education includes courses at Raindance and Panico in the UK, and two years on scholarship at the Lodz Film School in Poland (training ground of film directors such as Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda).

Anna’s films are:
The Rain Has Stopped (55 minute drama – winner of two awards and nominated for two other awards at the British Film Festival Los Angeles, 2009),
A Fragment of Being (65 minute documentary – nominated for the Human Spirit award at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, 2010, and received an Honorable Mention at the LA Movie Awards II, 2010),
My Uprising (16 minute documentary – received an Honorable Mention at the Los Angeles Reel Film Festival, 2009, and was screened by TV channel Planete Polska).
Ela (13 minute drama – screened at the Raindance Film Festival in the UK, and at the Atlanta Horror Film Festival, 2010).
The Sin (22 minute drama – screened at the SMOFI Film Festival, Poland, and at the Swansea Bay International Film Festival, 2010).

Feature length screenplays:
Chainsaw, The Camp (quarter-finalist, 14th Annual Fade In Awards 2009) and Pizzaman.

Short screenplays:
Little Pig (finalist in the Shriekfest Film Festival Screenplay Competition 2009), Curious Melvin and Arthur’s Cellar.

LINKS

IMDb 
Stills 
Britfilms
Flash 

About the Reviewer

Jason D. Brawn

Jason D. Brawn lives in London and his short stories and film reviews have appeared in The Horror Zine, Static Movement, Pill Hill Press, Wicked East Press, Living Dead Press, VideoVista and many more. 

Jason's currently close to finishing off his debut novella called Refuge, based on a reoccurring nightmare.

To visit him, go on http://jasonbrawn.blogspot.com/