Forbidden Sun (1989, Zelda Barron) - 7.0
A young and adorable Samantha Mathis starts attending gymnastics school in Greece, and gets to know the other girls there, and one girl in particular is rebellious and slightly troubled, and at some point, Mathis is raped, and so the troubled girl bands them all together to exact revenge on the guy who they’re pretty sure did it. I was very excited to hear about this movie’s existence. Teen girl coming-of-age, gymnastics, and rape-revenge all in one movie? Holy shit! Unfortunately, it’s not as amazing as it sounds. The teen girls bonding is only mildly entertaining. None of the girls are especially charming or worth having an attachment to (except perhaps Mathis, whose character slowly drifts into the background as the movie progresses, and pretty much disappears by the end). The rape-revenge subplot doesn’t come until an hour in. And that’s all it is; a subplot. It’s only there to show the troubled girl becoming more troubled (because somewhere along the way she had become the main character), and her idea of revenge is essentially to put the guy in a giant bull mask and jump over him. And it’s not even the right guy, though we do see some justice with the real rapist when he’s randomly gored by a bull, who the troubled girl also jumps over, gymnastically, before the movie ends in a triumphant freeze frame. There’s some good stuff in the movie, obviously, but it’s too all over the place, and not especially compelling.
05/25/10: VHS
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