Australian director Rowan Woods’ new film Little Fish opens with a montage of shots from within a car that drives down endless stretches of meandering roads. This cluttered passage should be the first indication that the filmmaker wasn’t entirely sure of what direction he was headed.
Woods manages to save his film from its scattered and unfocused narrative thanks to some terrific cinematography, an eerie, grim score, and the efforts of a sublime cast.
Little Fish is the portrait of Tracy (the exquisite Cate Blanchett), a former junkie struggling to keep ahead of her past. Tracy, a video-store clerk, seeks to buy into a partnership with her boss. All she needs is a loan from the bank for capital.
However, Tracy’s turbulent heroin-fused past hinders her prospects, as a credit check threatens to uncover her brushes with the law. She’s not entirely free of old influences, either, tending to her slowly decaying estranged stepfather, Lionel (Hugo Weaving-Agent Smith of The Matrix Trilogy), who’s still struggling to kick the habit, while her crippled brother Ray (Martin Henderson) insists on making her an accessory to his narcotic schemes.
Tracy is only grounded by her mother Janelle (Noni Hazlehurst)’s affection. That is, until Jonny, Tracy’s ex-boyfriend (Dustin Nguyen), returns to Sydney from Vancouver and threatens to unspool the remaining threads of her stability. All this plays out beneath the looming presence of the Sydney underworld, which both Ray and Jonny insist on benefiting from.
Woods’ film, which is primarily effective when portraying how a broken family manages to pick up the pieces and move forward despite their past, suffers when it enters intricate crime-world shenanigans. Intimate moments of isolation and reconciliation between mother, daughter, and outcast friends are undermined by the film’s forays into drug-cartel conspiracies.
However, these flaws are held at bay by the searing performances from the radiant Australian cast. Weaving delivers a devastating performance as an ex-football player ruined by heroin. He brilliantly captures Lionel’s pathetic desperation, as the character clings to the highs of a former life void of concerns.
Weaving has a fine foil in Blanchett, who follows up her Oscar-winning turn in The Aviator with a performance that defies expectations. Blanchett embodies Tracy’s stark existence, tenderly portraying the character’s frail attempts at salvaging the remnants of joy in relationships otherwise soured by tragedy.
Also notable is the warm performance by Hazlehurst as her mother, and a surprising turn from Sam Neill (yes, the dude from Jurassic Park) as a brooding drug lord (and occasional boyfriend of Lionel).
Only Dustin Nguyen’s slithering depiction of Jonny sticks out like a sore thumb, but that may not entirely be the actor’s fault. The menacing character who lures Tracy back to her old ways-while lacking any semblance of charisma-is underwritten and unconvincing, as there seems to be no foundation for her attraction to him.
Aside from Jonny and the scattershot narrative, Little Fish keeps from floundering thanks to the merits of a cast on top of its game. The endless road that opens the film does eventually reach a satisfactory destination-but one wishes it didn’t take so much effort to get there.
