User Reviews

The sapphic love between two young women is at the center of this intriguing story from Argentina. Lala, the daughter of a prominent judge in Buenos Aires is having an intense love affair with Guayi, the Paraguayan maid working for the family. Lala wants them to go Guayi's country to live in the house they will build by a lake. For that purpose she goes to a small town across the border. Unknown to Lala, the judge, is also having his way with Guayi, probably against the maid's wishes.

Nothing prepared Lala for what she finds once she gets North of the border. When she arrives at Guayi's house, she finds the fence decorated with little baby dolls and offerings left behind by people that went there as though looking for a place of worship. Guayi's father appears to let Lala in the house. He is a former soap star with a shady past, responsible for the tragedy his daughter experienced, and the reason she has stayed away from him. When Lala tries to leave, the man shows her a newspaper article showing her father was killed. Guayi is held responsible for the crime. Lala goes back to try to get her out of prison, something that proves to be almost impossible. With the help of a friend of Guayi this man stages a rescue. Finally the two women are together at last.

Directed by Lucia Puenzo, and based on her own novel, "The Fish Child", the film mixes some magic realism, favored by a lot of South American writers, with a sort of road film. The narrative is obscure, although the core of the story is the love between two young women from different backgrounds. The story does not make clear what really happened to Lala's father, something the director does not fully explore. The same thing can be said about the relationship between Lala and a father she knows took advantage of Guayi and her absent mother. There are a lot of themes the director wants to tackle and perhaps it is why the film goes in different directions.

The best thing in the film is the quality acting Ms. Puenzo got from the cast she put together. Ines Efron is quickly becoming one of the best actresses in Argentina, as she has already proved. Ms. Efron has an expressive face that adapts itself to conveying the emotions going on in Lala's head. Equally good is Mariela Vitale, a new face in films.

Rodrigo Pulpeiro's dark cinematography contributes to create the atmosphere in which the action is set. This film, although shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, has not been released commercially, as far as we know in the United States. One feels Ms. Puenzo will be around for quite some time because she is a voice that deserves our attention.

Lala is in love with her maid Ailin whom she has known since she was 13. They plan to steal from Lala's Argentinian family and run away back to Ailin's Paraguay home town on the lake. There is a mysterious legend of the Fish Child at the lake. Ailin is caught for the thieve and refuses to turn on Lala. The detention center has a dark secret and Lala strives to retrieve her love in a daring escape.

The two women are compelling characters and there is a nice forbidden love going on. The chemistry is OK but could be better. The movie could have a better flow. It is edited in a time-jumping disjointed way. It's not the best way to establish chemistry for the couple and for the flow of their journey. Time jumbos are not fit for everything. The movie stumbles a few times and the last act is where the movie fumbles. It's all jammed together with sex slavery, the escape, and the reveal of the legend. The worst is the overly emotional reaction to her dead dog in the middle of the shootout. I kind of chuckled when they carried both the injured and the dead dog as they escaped. The movie has some interesting aspects but overall, it is a slight miss.

Lucía Puenzo and star Inés Efrón unite for an LGBT follow-up to their above-average XXY. This time their focus is on the L part of that acronym as evidenced by the sexy DVD cover. For a second film, it's a slight improvement over its predecessor, not finding an interest in the transgendered romance (itself an intriguing topic) to sustain itself. Without such a crutch, Puenzo's limitations and development as a filmmaker are more visible. She has now made two good films but lacks the discipline to be great.

Puenzo has not learned how to incorporate surrealist and metaphorical imagery properly into her films. Like the clownfish shots of XXY, the phantasmagoria in The Fish Child is given its own separate sequence in which it to take place. The efficacy of these scenes is risible; they are there serving an indulgent purpose (this is a self-adaption of Puenzo's novel). She should to consider the meat floating in Buñuel's Los Olvidados, to name another Latin American example. Surrealism doesn't need to occur; its inclusion is appropriately conceived if a structured narrative is present.

Fortunately, Puenzo's editor has structured the film in such a way that it slowly unveils its predetermined story, avoiding the thriller clichés the DVD box claims the movie offers. With this detraction of plot comes greater opportunity to explore the characters' repressed queer femininity that is caught between girlhood and womanhood. They frequent nightclubs, where lecherous men hit on them, and they are shown chatting about their affections as the film progresses. Their chats occur in isolated places like a bathtub or a prison while the camera follows them exclusively. Puenzo suggests the idea that their self-actualization may only occur in places away from society, which few queer films address (they are too concerned with "otherness"). Thus, is not exploitative of its characters or indulgent of its queerness despite the promulgation of critics and marketers. The Fish Child is the rare GLBT film that is worth watching even it doesn't represent much improvement over XXY.

Recommended

Yay! Unfortunately, this dour drama didn't exactly convince me to check out the rest of the South American film industry. It's about the daughter of a well-known judge who ends up killing her father, but the family maid (who she's been having a romantic relationship with) gets the blame. Put it this way: if you like angsty, unfulfilled love stories this'll be right up your alley.

Our unsmiling protagonist chops all her hair off, mopes around a lot and talks to the people connected to her now imprisoned crush, and we get flashbacks of them taking a bath together and of the night of the death itself. None of these drawn-out scenes add up to very much at all, in fact it's very difficult to establish any visible chemistry between the sullen star-crossed pair at all. Note to the writers: Just because your characters SAY they adore each other constantly, doesn't mean we buy it if the allure and conviction ain't there.

Basically, it's just not an interesting or entertaining film to watch most of the time, so when the obligatory 'happy ending' eventually kicked in, I really couldn't have cared less. And neither, by the looks of things, did the main actresses. 4/10

"The Fish Child" or "El Nino Pez" is Argentinean director Lucia Puenzo follow up to the critical hit "XXY". Puenzo once again casts Ines Efron to star in this story of a family in the rich upper class suburbs of Buenos Aries.

"The Fish Child" is more ambitious and sprawling in its story telling which also contributes too many of its faults. While "XXY" was a small character drama focused on the struggle of one persons search for identity "The Fish Child" reaches for a more broad almost soap opera like style. The story is told in a fractured non linear style making a first viewing somewhat of a challenge.

It is a modern day love story between two young women Lala (Efron), the daughter of a judge and, Ailin the family maid. They plan to run away together to Paraguay and live in a house on the shores of Lake Ypoa. The problem is they have no money. Lala's father is about to retire and write a scathing memoir about the rampant corruption within the police force. But before he can do any of this he is murdered but by who? Lala and Ailin have their motives as do others.

The story is told from Lala's point of view and mainly focuses on Ailin. She is accused and arrested for the murder and send to prison. The story flashes back and forth in time to give us a background on the characters, but when it comes to the third act the plot is just too bloated and over stuffed. We find out a bit more about Ailin's past and an anticlimactic resolution to who killed Lala's father. Needless to say they escape to Paraguay and live happily ever after or something like that. Obviously not the greatest movie but the acting of the two girls is pretty decent and will appeal to those who scour the foreign films section looking for something different.

Everything is going wrong in this upper class family of Buenos Aires except the irregular love of the daughter for her Paraguayan maid. Lucia Puenzo's second opus (an adaptation from her own book) is even more audacious than her debut XXY.

Surfing through the classical genres (melodrama, thriller, sexploitation, voyage of self-discovering) she find her way to tell this poignant story of love and desire. It's also a denounce about the abuses of political power and everyday xenophobia. Superb performances from both leading ladies and the general cast, gloriously photographed and rightly directed. One of the great titles of 2009.