Goldfish Memory

Initially, I wasn’t sure if Goldfish Memory would qualify for this site. It’s very much an ensemble film. To my delight, nearly half of said ensemble were women who like to kiss women! Unfortunately, it took me almost halfway into the film to make this call. This mean I didn’t do my due diligence in writing everyone’s names down. Quite frankly, I can’t tell several of the characters apart.

Goldfish Memory takes place in Dublin, Ireland. And based on this film, there’s about a dozen people in Ireland and they’ve all dated. Its method towards an ensemble cast is sort of a six degrees of separation thing. Tom is a professor who likes to date his students. One of those students, Clara breaks up with him and instead starts dating a woman named Angie. Angie is best friends with a gay man named Red who’s trying to date David. David has a girlfriend, initially. But once that ends, she also gets a subplot with her new male love interest about commitment and religion. Clara and Angie break up. So Clara starts dating the woman Tom was cheating on her with. Also, Angie and Red have a one night stand which results in a pregnancy. There’s at least four other subplots here I didn’t even mention.

So, obviously Goldfish Memory covers a lot of ground. There’s a lot of characters who go through a lot of major life events. This is what primarily impressed me about the film. Goldfish Memory is 85 minutes long. It packs a whole damn lot onto 85 minutes. It’s incredibly impressive how the film managed to balance its characters and story lines. The characters mostly feel like they do go through complete arcs and change as people along the way. Goldfish Memory fits a truly insane amount of character and plot into its runtime. And it does so without feeling too overstuffed.

Conversely, the negative is just that there’s too many characters. I don’t care about half of them. There’s a bunch of brunet men and blonde women who I can’t even tell apart. Also, one of the more notable characters is Tom, the professor. He’s deeply creepy and I did not want good things for him. Alas, this is a light romantic dramedy so Tom gets his own romantic subplot. This is just me being heterophobic probably, but I did find the straight couples less enjoyable than the gay characters. Most were boring and Tom stood out by being icky. The upside to all of this is that this is a fast-paced ensemble film. Don’t like the relationship onscreen? Just wait a few minutes and it’ll pivot to someone else.

Goldfish Memory is a bit iffy about gender essentialism and bisexuality. All of this does fit in the time that it’s made, but it’s still a bit of a bummer to see. Clara has a subplot about having a boyfriend and also dating Angie. The boyfriend initially doesn’t care because lesbianism is hot. Eventually though, he and Angie get on Clara’s case about dating a man and a woman. Clara’s story lands her in bisexual stereotypes about not being able to commit to one partner or one sexuality. Red and Angie also have a conversation about how dating men and women sucks for specific reasons. It’s boiled down to specific gender stereotypes. I really wanted to take these fictional characters from 2003 aside and give them a talking to. Guys, it’s not that dating men or women sucks, it’s that dating in people suck in general. Gender discrimination solved!

Overall, Goldfish Memory is a strong ensemble film. It covers a lot of ground with its numerous characters, relationships and sexualities. It also successfully hits the right tone for a dramedy. That alone puts it far ahead of several films that call themselves dramedies. This is a really assured, competent film from Liz Gill. Gill really managed to defy the odds by making a successful ensemble dramedy. That’s a high level of difficulty and she made it look easy.

Overall rating: 6.7/10

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