La Vida de los Peces

I had never seen a Chilean film before the 'Life of Fish' was screened during a Spanish language film festival here in Perth, Western Australia.

I do not understand how MdIndeHond could find this film boring, I was mesmerised by its slow pace, the use of silence (there was almost no soundtrack), the constraint of filming the entire action within the confines of a house, the believable characters and dialogue and the utterly compelling acting.

'Life of Fish' may appeal more to older viewers than 20-somethings. I certainly am aware of missed opportunities in my own life and could relate to Andres dilemma.

If 'Life of Fish' is typical of the quality of Chilean film making then I shall certainly make an effort to see any other Chilean films that happen to reach 'the most isolated major city in the world'.

This movie is sort of a "Uncle Vanya" or "August" type of movie, but with people of thirty years old: the poignant story of a guy who wasted his life, and is suffering the remorse of having abandoned his friends and his love. He's stuck in a strange party where his ghosts begins to haunt him, and he's faced with memories, choices, loneliness, nostalgia and remorse. It was emotionally perfect: the acting was great, the dialog and scenes were carefully crafted, and the music score is just perfect. Perhaps the movie has some minor issues in the editing and dialog, but those are only details. It's one of the best movies made in Chile of the last decades.

10/10

The Director of this film, Matías Bize, started out early his career. His movies have grown a lot since his first attempts, and if we compare his first big hit (in Chile) "en la cama", we can really observe an abysmal difference with "la vida de los peces". While the first movie has the same elements, meaning a small confined space with two main characters mainly talking to each other during the whole movie, it's only in "la vida de los peces" that we can have a real insight in the characters, they actually feel alive and throughout the movie we start to evolve feelings for them. My opinion is that the script is much better than his other attempts, for this time situations happen in a way we don't expect them. I'm usually not fond of this type of films, but this time I had a great surprise. I think, the Director is finally starting to master his style.

I came to movie for curiosity and because I've heard from someone, so I came home with the movie and push the play button when I was totally comfortable to see it...so I began to hold my breath, because the movie start with no advice, and If you don't really pay attention to the dialog's you will miss a lot of the movie, because the characters say things that are so intrusive that maybe you feel like someone is questioning you, or you been played at that moment of the character dialogs. I decide to pause a little the movie I was overwhelmed for by the characters and the way they relate to each other, I was getting to much involved in the movie, so when I looked to the played time I noticed 40 minutes have passed, and I was feeling like just no more than 15 minutes have played.

Is a great movie to show you that no astonishing sceneries needed to make a good film, everything happen in the same house here and there over the place. The director do a good job on subjectives cameras, and shots where we have a shirt stories just for what he shows.

You'll have a lot of emotions with this film, Is a romantic film thats worth seeing.

La vida de los peces starts out with an abrupt conversation, in which Andrés, a journalist working for travel magazines, just returned to Chile after 10 years of absence. His friends asked him if he has "talked to her," referring to Andrés's ex-girlfriend Bea. As Andrés and Bea finally encounter each other and strike a conversation (after spending much time avoiding the subject they want to talk about - that is their relationship), we discover the reason Andrés left town and went to Germany, Bea's current married life, and that they still have (lots of) feelings left for each other. While the setting is purposely made to be a confined space crowded with people, strangers and friends alike, the winding paths Andrés and Bea took to avoid each other and to finally meet each other are the journeys to find themselves, especially Andrés. Regardless of the ending (and they say it's not the end that matter, but rather the process of getting there), I really enjoyed the conversations between the two protagonists that seem very realistic, the strangely romantic moments where they were just standing there looking at goldfish circling around recounting their memories of the past, and especially the final scene, which must have been one of the best ending scenes ever in all the movies that I have seen.