Year of the Fish

its old story but good. sad, funny, romance. i expect look of 'scanner darkly' but year of the fish is different, in my opinion prettier and the more interesting. not a perfect film but i like a lot. its fun to see chinatown neighborhood of new york city in this way, and characters are interesting and play well. my favorite character was the grandmother of johnny, who is incredibly sweet and generous. i wish there were more of her in the story. both lead actors are good and also the witch character too. one more thing i liked was the music that touched my heart. story is simple one but it still moves and surprises because we don't know exactly what to expect at each moment.

It's hard to find where to start with this. I suppose the camera work is as good a place as any - And although uninspired, there aren't any major enough blunders to justify ripping into the film's photography. Although a lot of shots are longer than they should be, and there is a great deal of grating breaks in pacing, the camera can be safely ignore, as in most films. The so-called "rotoscoping," however, adds positively nothing to the content of the movie. No actual rotoscoping appears to take place; instead, something which greatly resembles an ugly Photoshop filter has been applied to the images, making the already low-budget (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) film appear tacky and cheap. While some moments use the "canvas" filter to good effect, it's never sufficiently explored to justify its inclusion. It appears to be there mostly so that the film can get away with lower production values and crude make-up.

The acting, although also marked by some entertaining moments, is mostly wooden. The main character wears a bewildered or frightened expression for the whole duration of the film; the relatively minor sub-plot of the main character's paramour and his relationship to his friends are actually where all the decent acting in the film is focused, and Ken Leung works hard to pull the movie out of the deep pit it manages to dig for itself. Some of the characters are downright stereotypical caricatures. The figure of Aunt Yaga is poorly, if at all, explained, and seems to just have been plucked out of Chinese mythology and dropped unceremoniously into the film. The character of An Nguyen, poorly dressed as her character requires, is inexplicably considered to be very attractive, even though that is clearly not the case.

All of that can be overcome by a film with a good story to tell - Unfortunately, Year of the Fish has got nothing. The plot unfolds by force, being pushed by a sort of on-going deus ex machina - Ye Xian, despite being the protagonist, has no agency in the film and very little initiative. All of the plot points are resolved by a single character whose motivation and origin are completely unclear. It's impossible for the audience to actually know why anything is happening; the story seems to be moved forward not by causality or by the motivation of the characters, but by some sort of overwhelming, invisible, fate-like entity trying to push the main character through adversity and then hand her happiness on a silver plate; again, the film comes off as incredibly cheap. While there is nothing wrong with the author's voice, or with the traditional structure of a fairy tale or an adventure, - obstacles followed by success - the film doesn't work to support its narrative structure.

Lots of little details in the movie are completely unnecessary, and seem to be there just to try and cram in some sort of arcane trivia from the original Chinese stories it is based on. Information is delivered via random appearances of a prophetic character. Narration is provided by a fish whose job in the plot is unclear. The film teeter-totters dangerously between fantasy and (in the mind of the author) gritty realism, and while some interesting situations can be glimpsed briefly just at the very border between these two worlds, the film never spends any time there; there is no descent, but rather, the main character flickers unwittingly between the world of fairy tale and real-life Chinatown, and the transition is never explored sufficiently to be interesting.

All in all, a transparently cheap attempt at exploiting the structure and feel of a fairy tale in order to extort some emotional reaction from the audience. It falls flat on its face both for failing to recognise what makes fairy tales wondrous, and for populating its world with antagonists that are too easy to hate, protagonists that are too difficult to like, and supporting characters which are little but the grinding wheels of the author's inevitably forced conclusion.

Remember the bad old days, before Asian American cinema, when we had to rely on Hollywood hacks to tell our stories, those bleak, desperate times? Well, they're back. (Not that Wayne Wang could've done any better with this thing) The rotoscope effect, fairly well done, is good at obscuring the parade of ridiculous stereotypes and clichés. This a rare chance for Asian American talent to flex their acting chops a bit though to what end? Tsai Chin, who used to play the Oriental sex kitten parts back in the 60's is effective as the impossibly heartless madam at the massage parlor where the lead character (An Nguyen) finds herself. This entire sequence of events seems like a direct steal from the 1950 Mexican melodrama Aventurera, also depicting a trapped innocent in the big city.

In a variation on the fairy tale, this Cinderella has a mean "me-love you-long-time" massage sister and one nice one (played by the lovely Corrine Hong Yu) who eventually helps save the day. Rounding out the cast is Ken Leung as Johnny, an assimilated Chinese American with an engaging East Coast vibe.(Sammy Fong redux?) Oh, yeah, he just happens to play the accordion like Astor Piazzolla. What's not to like?

This is a retelling of the Cinderella story, updated to modern day China Town in New York. The narrator is the eponymous fish. The film begins when Yi Xian arrives in New York, an illegal immigrant, perhaps, imported to work for her 'Aunty' Mrs Su and in the care of Auntie's minder and younger brother, Vinnie. Xian is 17. Her father back in China has fallen on hard times and has sent her/sold her to Aunty to earn money. Xian quickly discovers Auntie's business is a massage parlour. In the words of one of the girls who is told off to instruct her: "First you do the back, then they turn over and you do the dick". Xian refuses to "do the dick" and Aunty gives her instead all the cleaning to do. She has a debt to work off, after all.

Xian meets another Aunty, Aunty Yaga, a fearful witch, and for no clear reason is given a fish (the narrator) to take care of. There are trials and tribulations, but Cinderella meets her prince and everyone lives happily ever after (or at least with a blessing from the fish). It's a sweet story, sweetly retold.

It is also filmed in live action and then rotoscoped to look like an animated watercolour painting. At least, that seems to be the idea. There are one or two scenes in which the watercolour motif works well, (mostly street scenes in the rain, close-ups of the fish) and the dissolve from one scene to another is effective, but much of the time you do find yourself wondering why they bothered. Especially as the rotoscoping isn't really all that well done. Some of the scenes were visually so poor I did wonder whether the rotoscoping had been done against the clock in a sweatshop like the one Aunty Yaga runs, or whether the film had been batch converted with a cheap software programme.

The story is the story: we all know it, whether it's originally Chinese (as the director says), or Egyptian (as I remember being told) or Russian (Aunty Yaga = Baba Yaga), is really neither here nor there. The actors give it their best shot and it's a pity their faces are sometimes concealed by the rotoscoping.

It is difficult to know exactly who the intended audience is though. It's not an adult movie, despite the scenes in the massage parlour (there's nothing raw, nothing even that might be called soft porn). But it's not a children's film either, just because of the scenes and talk in and around the massage parlour. It's not a documentary or a slice of real life – it's a fairy tale.

Is it intended for a teenage audience? Johnny the 'prince' is a bit of a wimp. He's a musician, true, but he plays the accordion. How much teenage credibility does that give him? And Cinderella is dogged in her refusal to "do" dicks, and in keeping herself safe and pure, but she is also very dutiful. She doesn't try to escape; she accepts her duty to pay off the financial debt she has incurred to Aunty. She still honours her father, despite what he has done to her.

I saw this at the Gothenburg Film Festival one Sunday evening, and the cinema was very full. The audience showed no great enthusiasm. Ultimately the film is sweet, yes, but a bit boring.

I heartily agree with previous reviewers on a few points:

• the film plays on ridiculous stereotypes - the acting, while certainly amateur at best, is hindered by a comically clichéd script - the filter effect is distracting and pointless. Perhaps it was meant to give the impression of fish-vision, but my wife and I both hoped from the first moment that the effect would go away after the opening credits.

I gave the movie two stars instead of one simply because of the comedy factor. Lines like "Now you do the cock!" are reminiscent of the unintentional humor of Wiseau's "The Room." Awkward cut-aways to a goldfish slowly opening and closing its mouth have a similarly hilarious effect.

I should be a bit less harsh, on the assumption that this may have been a student's film project. I hope it was.

I might have been more forgiving were it not for that aggravating filter.

You might enjoy this movie at a party or for sheer comedic value.