I don't know how this movie came to mind yesterday, but it's driving me nuts not remembering the title or who was in it. I may not be remembering details exactly right, so bear with me:

It's about this girl and a neighborhood boy who befriends her. The girl is really quiet, and if I recall, she never talks. She's befriended by a boy in the same building, and I seem to remember something about them either flying a kite or a model airplane or something like that. She comes out of her shell little by little, and starts going to public school with him, and he gets into a fight protecting her from being made fun of. By the end of the movie, something happens to her which results in her going back into her shell, and the final scene is him visiting her outside the home/hospital she gets stuck in.

Ring a bell?

Karate Kid

Gee. Naming an obviously incorrect title. How utterly original of you.

My girl

With the genders reversed, The Boy Who Could Fly?

No, I have that one on DVD. Good guess, though. The genders are definitely not reversed in this one. The girl is the quiet one. I also seem to remember it taking place years ago, and the boy is telling the story as a now-adult, or something like that. Also, I remembered that the fight the boy had is the thing that made her snap toward the end. She saw him getting his ass kicked and she ran off somewhere and hid, and the boy was the only one who knew where she was hiding.

I also think the girl and her mother were from Czechoslovakia, or Poland, or some place like that.

I believe it's Alan & Naomi with Lukas Haas.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103640/

Bob

YES! Thank you!

I knew the boy was someone who went on to other roles as he grew up, but I couldn't remember for the life of me who it was. Now that I see it was Lukas Haas, my subconscious must have been tripped when I saw Witness the other night.

Hey, this was released on my brithday. No DVD though.