Little Fish

Tracy is an ex-heroin junkie how has cleaned up and wants to start a new life in her new store' but she cant finance her new endeavor. Her brother Ray is a speed dealer looking for his big deal, his friend Jonny is an ex-deal who is now a stock-broker. Lionel is looking to go straight, giving up heroin. Tracy's mother Janelle was friends with Lionel but broke off when he gave Tracy Herion. Lionel is also infatuated with Brad, his dealer.

This is a very strong drama, and its been awhile since Australia has made a good drama. The story is a great look at family, friendship, the pain of change and rejection. Jacqueline Perske script is very deep and multi-layered. There are many sub-plots that keep you constantly thinking. Rowan Wood's direction is a step up from his last feature 'The Boys', being more experimental and more unconventional. The cinematography is wonderful, the use of many washes raise the mood and tension to higher levels, tightening the atmosphere of depression.

This has a stellar cast; Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Noni Hazlehurst, Sam Neill, Lisa McCune, Martin Henderson and Dustin Nguyen all give strong performances, not a single flaw in the acting. Blanchett and Weaving give great career performances, Weaving is just brilliant. Hazlehurst brings a performance so shockingly different, this is not the Nomi you know from 'Play School'.

The only thing i felt was wrong with Little Fish is its just abit to long. If it was cut down by ten minutes or so, it would have the pacing more faster and get to the point a lot quicker.

This is a spring board of better things to come out of Australia.

This is an interesting movie, well worth seeing, even though it has substantial failings. Evenness of pace is probably its most debilitating aspect: the slow, steady plod to the climax prevents that climax from being quite as climactic as it should be. Also, the director and his DOP are too in love with the hand-held camera for their own good: too much of it really is irritating, and there is much too much of it in this film. Having said that, there are some wonderful shots and juxtaposition of shots, moving us from warm reds to cool blues and back again. As far as the plot is concerned, the characters are all too neatly slotted into it, emphasising the story's artificiality, which plays against naturalism of the acting, just as the snappy editing plays against the hand-held camera-work. .Compare and contrast THE USUAL SUSPECTS, which is so wonderfully artificial throughout that its story's twists, turns and games, and the theatrical turns from most of its cast add up to something very entertaining. LITTLE FISH, in the end, perhaps takes itself a little too seriously.

That's the carping out of the way. The good news is that the acting is terrific. Blanchett is a rare leading actress, capable of convincing us she's an ordinary working girl - one simply can't imagine, for example, Kidman taking this role on and making it so real and touching. Sam Neill, cast against type, is wonderfully loathsome. Martin Henderson, Dustin Nguyen, Joel Tobeck - all give top-class support. But the revelation is Hugo Weaving, who is magnificent as the drug-addicted former star-sportsman. Can this be the same actor who has been marking his time in THE MATRIX and LORD OF THE RINGS? Amazingly, it is. A totally convincing transformation. All in all, an only just better-than-average thriller, greatly enhanced by its actors.

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.

Rowan Woods' previous film, "The Boys" (1997) had a certain detachment as he examined the psychology of the perpetrators of a particularly nasty crime - watching it was like looking at bugs through a microscope, though it did feature a truly brilliant performance by David Wenham. In this film from a script by Jacqueline Perske he takes a warmer and certainly a lighter look at some rather unprepossessing people living in the south-western suburbs of Sydney - specifically Cabramatta.

Tracey is a former heroin addict, clean for the last four years but with a less than perfect credit record, who is trying to buy a share in the video shop she is working in so she can expand into the internet gaming business (hey, isn't that illegal in Australia?). Her friend Lionel, a former football star and ex-boyfriend of her mother's is still an addict. As she tries unsuccessfully to raise money from some almost comically reluctant financiers she become involved in looking after Lionel, who seems to have a rather close relationship with Jockey, a local hoodlum and drug dealer and his sidekick Steve. Her Vietnamese-Australian ex-boyfriend Johnny suddenly arrives on the scene after four years away and is soon involved in a drug deal with her one-legged (and rather stupid) brother Ray. The "Little Fish" of the title turn out to be those little plastic fish than come with soy sauce inside them in East Asian restaurants, recycled to contain amphetamines, but it could equally describe most of the characters.

It's all very complicated and to be honest the plot is a bit of a monkey puzzle – I have the feeling there might be a few holes in it - but the film is really about the struggle to climb out of the mire. Some make it, others don't; often those who succeed owe their success to chance, others who fail do so despite every effort. Cate Blanchett as Tracey is as good as she has ever been. You may think she is a little genteel for the role, but blot out your memories of "Elizabeth" and she is just fine. Hugo Weaving as Lionel gives a pretty well definitive portrait of a burnt-out heroin addict. Sam Neil as the ruthless Jockey is a little less suave than usual, though his clothes are tailor made and his car a Jaguar. Noni Hazelhurst is all heart as mother (Heart is her surname) and Dustin Nguyen as Johnny, despite the dodgy accent, gets away with playing a person about 10 years younger than he actually is. Martin Henderson is a wonderful dumb Ray.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the film is the up-close and personal photography (just about every scene looks like it was done with a hand-held camera) combined with some very imaginative fade-in and fade-out. The result is so atmospheric I almost felt the rain and smelled Hugo's lack of aftershave. More to the point, I felt the characters' moods. It was almost like being inside the movie. I very much liked the other recent Oz movie "Look Both Ways" which I saw two weeks ago. It also featured some innovative techniques, but this is a far more sophisticated piece of work.

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