Little Fish (2005)

This film is about a woman who tries to get her life back on track after 4 years of heroin addiction.

I find the plot confusing, and the story poorly told. It is a drama, but lacks the drama. The pace of the story is very slow. Even after 90 minutes of the film, the only message I really perceive from the film is that Cate Blanchett's character is unable to get a loan despite repeated attempts. I am particularly annoyed by the excessive use of glares and halos around bright lights. It is not even a nice visual effect to start with anyway. Despite the stellar cast, I find this film unable to deliver what it could have been. I would not recommend it.

Fmovies: There is no surprise here that director Rowan Woods has gone for the more exploratory, more ambiguous and more artistic approach to his film Little Fish. The man has a relatively long line of experience in film-making and moving image production on the whole but here and now when this film was made in 2004, he persists on the exploratory and the artistic despite being given an extremely heavyweight cast that he must've known would've attracted attention abroad. And although I am all for the artistic and the experimental, the effort here just does not cut it – wearing off after about forty-five minutes.

Little Fish reminded me of a BBC produced Scottish drama made in 2002 named Morvern Callar. Both films are exploratory and somewhat ambiguous in their atmosphere; both centre around a confused young female as they live out their days in a respective place that is simple and unspectacular but all the more realistic for it. Both women are faced with an immediate moral choice regarding an event in which the repercussions would be severe: unreported suicide in Morvern Callar and the re-introduction to drugs in Little Fish. Cate Blanchett plays Tracy, an Australian woman in a Sydney suburb tempted back into the world of drug dealing after suffering a prior tragedy, years ago. Blanchett does her usual oblivious faced, soft spoken role that almost demands the audience feel sorry for her or at least 'side' with her – see Elizabeth and Bandits for other examples. She has some friends, some family, a cute little job in a video store and generally gets on well with life following her prior excursion into the world of the 'don't go there'.

But complications arise and the film begins to loose its focus around about the hour mark. Little Fish is not really about too much when you break things down for the first hour or so bar life in Australia, circa 2004 or 2005 depending on weather you want to go by shooting dates or release dates. Given this fact, the film could really be set anywhere and at anytime in history providing the location is developed enough to have a video rental store. The characters in this film are cardboard and uninteresting, most of the time the film will be more interested in giving them funky sounding ring-tones than developing them beyond mere people who stand and talk for minutes on end. What do we know about Lionel played by acting heavyweight Hugo Weaving? We know that he was an Aussie Rules footballer but that is only through the various shots of posters displaying him in action. Apart from this, any dialogue or individual scenes are uninteresting and bland with that distinct annoying feeling you get when a film is trying to pile on an artistic presence.

But then the film brings in its weak attempt at a narrative and its unexciting character development. The people in this film are uninteresting people with uninteresting goals. One character wants to get a new floor for her apartment; Tracy herself wants to open a shop in the said area and the general plot goal throughout is to generally avoid the drugs business and stay away from the wrong people – how exciting. But after being rejected for various loans in two of only very few scenes early on that actually further the film, it seems Tracy's ideas about participating in a drug deal may be too strong to turn down. She will after all, get a lot of money out of it for not much. Primarily, people come and then they go in the film without doing or saying that much. Jonny (Nguyen) is an ex-flame and a somewhat boring

I was very disappointed by this film. Having read countless positive 4 star reviews for this film I was really looking forward to seeing it. Having watched it recently I have to say that the whole plot was very dull and didn't offer any new plot ideas, direction styles, or anything original in the slightest. If you want to see a proper film about dysfunctional heroin addicts watch Trainspotting ! Having all our great Australian actors coming back to make an Australian film does not automatically make a good film, and in this case it certainly hasn't.

Performances by Hugo and Cate while good, did not make up for a generally average, unoriginal script and storyline.

Little Fish fmovies. About time we had a good script with strong characters for some of the Antipodes' best stars. A film that will appeal on different levels, depending on your background and knowledge of Sydney, its "little Saigon" and its drug subculture. The "little fish" are both the junkies (current and ex) treading water or drowning not waving in the cruel sea of a modern society, and the fish-shaped sauce containers that the latest crop of drugs come in. Hugo Weaving and Sam Neill are brilliant in roles that have borrowed much from Oz sporting and media characters, Noni Hazelhurst is convincing as a suburban mum weighed down by lack of love and betrayal. Martin Henderson completes the family as the disabled, junkie boofhead brother. Cate Blanchett is more than passable as the recovering junkie, still living in the middle of the milieu she is trying to escape. Cabramatta and its Vietnamese community also star, with Dustin Nguyen and his family reflecting the Oz/Viet cultural mix. A film that will appeal strongly to Oz moviegoers, but strong enough also to be appreciated by an international audience.

Writer Jacqueline Perske and Director Rowan Woods chalk up another successful Australian film in LITTLE FISH, an intense, very personal drama about how illegal drugs affect communities, families and individuals. The story begs patience from the viewer as it is gratefully one that does not spell everything out for the viewer, but instead introduces the characters slowly and with hints of backgrounds that bring them to the moments of crisis the time-frame of the film uses.

Taking place in the Little Saigon area of Sydney, Tracy Heart (Cate Blanchett) is a recovered junkie who lives with her mother Janelle (Noni Hazlehurst) and partial amputee brother Ray (Martin Henderson), each trying to make ends meet in a life previously destroyed by drug addiction. Tracy has been clean for four years, works in a video store but has dreams of owning her own business, dreams that are thwarted by banks refusing to give her business loans solely on the basis of her previous addiction. Ray, his amputated leg the result of a car accident somehow connected with drugs, still sells heroin in 'little fish' containers, occasionally calling upon Tracy to make pickups and deliveries. The now absent stepfather Lionel (Hugo Weaving) fights his own addiction both to drugs and to his dealer Brad (Sam Neill) with whom he has been in a gay relationship since his divorce from Janelle. Tracy tries to support Lionel's attempts to kick his habit, but the attempts are failures. Everything comes to a head when 1) Tracy is desperate without her needed bank loan, 2) Tracy's Vietnamese ex-lover Jonny (Dustin Nguyen) returns from Vancouver where his family sent him to avoid the persecution of rehab in Sydney, 3) Brad retires leaving Lionel without a source of drugs or love and Lionel is replaced by a quasi-normal Steven (Joel Tobeck) who kicks the last part of the film into a spin. There are no solutions to anyone's problems: things just happen and the characters respond in the best way they can with the ominous cloud of drug addiction shading their lives and futures.

The script is terse and smart and the direction is relentlessly realistic and well paced. Cate Blanchett gives a sterling portrayal of the very complex Tracy, and Hugo Weaving, Noni Hazelhurst, Sam Neill, Dustin Nguyen, and Martin Henderson are superb. This is a tough little film that does not fear to examine the truth about the effect of drugs on people's lives and spirits. It is a very fine film. Recommended. Grady Harp

As Cate Blanchett said herself, 'Little Fish' is about the people between the middle class and lower class, those who are struggling with their daily lives and are largely ignored. Perske's screenplay is good but it could have been a little tighter as the film does drag at some portions. Woods is good and he brings a certain realness (with the help of the actors) in portraying the complex relationships between the characters. All the main characters, most of them 'recovered' addicts and some returning addicts, try to seek a better life but there is just 'one last trade' that would 'get them to their goals'. Dustin Nguyen (in spite of an uneven accent), Martin Hendersen, Sam Neill and Hugo Weaving are all adequate in their parts and Noni Hazelhurst is wonderful. However, 'Little Fish' belongs to Cate Blanchett. One can see a Blanchett that's completely different from her Hollywood films (then again she's always different in each of her movies). A difficult part required an immensely talented actress and she just makes the task look easy. There's a frightening scene where Cate's Tracy is tempted to 'return' but then a magical scene follows where she walks into a choir rehearsal of a group of singing Vietnamese children and she is confused, conflicted and eventually comforted. This one profound scene was so brilliantly executed with the long shot camera, the innocent voices of the children as they sing the powerful words, and Cate asking repeatedly where the bathroom is while being confused, that the strength of it stays in mind long after the end credits have rolled.