Sôshite watashi-tachi wa pûru ni kingyo o,

Fast, colourful, perky, angsty, cheeky, dynamic, in-your-face silly tween girls. It's not boring. But not revolutionary or new by any means. Which is not to it's average. Or maybe it is. But that's fine. I liked it.

It's relatable I guess, although for me it's through a more mature lens. As in I can understand it now, although I didn't necessarily feel it at the same age. I come from a mid-size town and I somehow always had the prospect of moving to the capital city, which luckily is very close for me. As for the dread of an average, boring, meaningless life surrounded by like-minded average people, I never felt that. We were still a struggling country and we had other worries and priorities. Life didn't feel comfortable, so getting bogged down in my comfort zone was never likely, because childhood and teenhood were never comfortable for me, it was always an awkward age of feeling out of place that I needed to overcome. I did dread being average in high-school, but I think a lot of teens do, like that terrifying fear of being the most boring person ever, I suppose that's why we're so extra in those years, asserting and creating our personality on the go, and thank god I got over that because 1. It was exhausting and 2. I must he been insufferable to the outside world. And 3. I am nothing like my teenage self now. I hope none of us are, for humanity's sake.

Anyway, my point is I understand some of what these girls or the protagonist-narrator is feeling, but a lot of it is intellectualized understanding. I now strongly believe there's nothing wrong with living an average life to the outside world as long as you have a rich (enough) inner life that you are content with. Whether you keep that to yourself or you share it with a select number of people that you trust is up to the person. But most of us are objectively boring and that's ok. Society makes us do boring jobs to be able to afford a boring livelihood. But that's better than no livelihood.

Art happens when humans communicate some part of the human condition to other humans. Whether it's futility, love, loss, humor, or tragedy, true art has a lasting impact rooted in genuine emotion.

Such is the case with Makoto Nagahisa's 'And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool.' A distinctive debut short film with a signature voice, 'Goldfish' follows four fifteen-year-old girls who we come to understand profoundly within the 27-minute running time. Nagahisa has a brilliantly light touch, straining the girls' monologues through a series of kinetic montages not unlike 'Run Lola Run.'

The group deals primarily with the doldrums of small-town life, but Nagahisa wisely doesn't patronize. Even the off-the-wall moments of comedy and magical realism he employs don't feel as much like a cinematic construction as they do a whimsical illustration of the onset of angst.

There is a period in all of our lives when we haven't grown up yet, and we'd like to, but we're still deciding whether or not it's a cool thing to do. Many films have explored this highway of early pubescence, but 'Goldfish' is so fresh and original in its take that it threatens to leap off the screen and take you on an adventure.

Maybe, as the ending suggests, suburban frustration is part of the adventure of life. After all, the rest of the film tells us it can be just as vibrant as what we dream will come next.

Small-town angst, teenage existential crises, jealousy, small acts of rebellion, manic punk energy, the same sorts of themes/narrative ideas found in many of Bruce Springsteen's best 1970s songs... if any of that sounds intriguing, then I guess And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool is worth checking out. It's definitely got style and a distinct personality, perhaps even being too aggressive in those departments for its own good at times. But it does hit hard when it needs to, and it's certainly distinctive as far as presentation and energy go.

But it's bombastic and all over the place in a way that can hinder the whole thing, rather than help. I'd have enjoyed it more had it been reined in a bit, but I respect the decision to give it that crazed momentum (contrasting with tedium and a lack of escape) as something that felt unique. Less forgivable is having that weird scene with the brother talking to his webcam but not following up on that at all. Unless I missed something, why bother? Especially because most of the other little tangents and side characters/subplots were addressed in narration right near the end. A misstep like that sticks out more in a short film than a feature film, I feel.