La vie des poissons

The Life of Fish is a very accomplished little movie from Chile. Andres, a travel guide who is frequently traveling the world has a brief stop in Chile where he attends a friend's birthday party. In addition to seeing old friends, he meets an old flame in the party. They used to be in love once but now she is a divorced mum with two kids. This reunion leads them to re-examine their relationship and why they never married each other. Will she take the plunge and leave her kids with their father and join Andres on his travels? Life of Fish is played in real time and at the end you feel as though you've spent a very worthwhile 83 minutes. It is sensitively directed and beautifully acted. The soundtrack is also terrific. It is, in many ways, reminiscent of Richard Linklater's Before Sunset.

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.

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

A very good movie from the Director Matías Vize. Sometimes the atmosphere of the movie is brilliant, a lot of feelings inside, moments with good times of silence, when the silence says a lot of things, and sometimes nothing to say is better to know how the feelings are.

Very good actors, specially Blanca Lewin, she is brilliant to communicate a lot of things without says nothing, only with the facial things. I love the movie, and you never know how is gonna end.

During the movie is possible to see very good actors who show us that the Chileans filming industry is young but have a very good future.

If you like watching movies like "El secreto de sus ojos" or "En la cama" you ar gonna enjoy this.

Excellent movie!! Enjoy it.