Little Fish Review

Go and see Little Fish for a bit of refreshing culture shock without the schlock. Try the refreshing salty taste of a bit of reality therapy – a few shots of genuine cultural recognition. And feel how good it is to see those westy suburbs, those fish markets and train stations, and hear those accents and that home grown laconic wit.

Little Fish’s title derives from a variety of aquatic themes. There are the little blue plastic containers of speed manufactured in a bush hideaway out of Sydney (for those not familiar with them, they’re just like the ones soy sauce comes in with take away sushi). Then there is the recurring motif of Tracy (Cate Blanchett) lapping up and down the local pool to try and cast away the demons of her heroin addicted past, and the opening and closing shots of a blissful childhood spent on a Sydney beach.  And finally there is the pervasive theme of the five central characters, all little fish trying valiantly to swim against the currents of their past which threaten to pull them under.

It’s a gritty, edgy, film, not especially successful when it ventures into thriller territory towards the end, but palpably tense in the very ordinary banality and sense of entrapment it evokes throughout the rest of the film. You feel really anxious when you’re watching these doomed characters try to shake off the legacy of their drug addicted and petty criminal pasts.

But that is not to say it’s unremittingly bleak either.  Jacquelin Perske’s script has some wonderfully laconic humour, and her lines are delivered with spot-on Australian understatement by a terrific ensemble cast led by Blanchett and Hugo Weaving. Noni Hazlehurst is outstanding as a gutsy single mum trying desperately to keep her grown up kids alive. Forget Playschool and Better Homes and Gardens. Hazlehurst here is tough, angry, warm, forgiving, and totally believable.

Blanchett is almost too elegant and self assured for the role of the working class reformed heroin addict, trying against the odds to get a bank loan to set up a small video and internet gambling business, and torn by attraction to a former boyfriend Jonny (perfectly played by the stylish Dustin Nguyen) and loyalty to her washed-up former heroin supplier and faded footy star, Lionel (Hugo Weaving).  But her character has an irresistible and delicately balanced mix of toughness and raw vulnerability and you can forgive her for at times looking just too…well… too like Cate Blanchett.

Forget all the hype about Little Fish heralding an Australian film renaissance. Such predictions are always doomed to fail because of the fallacy that there is a formula for success – that somehow a new school of wannabe little fish can be cloned.

But don’t miss Little Fish, whatever you do. See it for the great cast. See it for a rare glimpse of Vietnamese Australian life in the outer Western suburbs of Sydney. And see it because you’ll enjoy the lively discussions you’ll have with your friends about the ambiguities of the plot and the meaning of the ending.

But don’t see it if you vote Family First or if you’ve never known anyone whose human frailties have led them off the straight and narrow in search of booze, chocolate, nicotine, heroin, or a flutter on the pokies. If these foibles are off your empathy radar screen, then perhaps stay at home for a night of Australian Idol, mega cool Ray Martin – or even Better Homes and Gardens.

 

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