Vanessa McMahon

This year at the open of the 2nd annual Aruba Film Festival (AIFF), one of the films to kick off the festival was the acclaimed Goya award winning film THE LIFE OF FISH (Chile, 2011) by the brilliant director Matias Bize. This was Chile’s 2011 Oscar Entry film and since its world premier in at Venice Film Festival I have seen the film several times now and it remains my favorite indie film of the year.

Matias Bize's 'LA VIDA DE LOS PECES' (The Life of Fish) is so minimalist and yet such a heart rendering film, accompanied by a mesmerizing soundtrack, that I cannot get enough of this vivid multicolored love story...What can I say?

'THE LIFE OF FISH' is about a young man, Andres (played by Santiago Cabrera), who returns home to Santiago, Chile after living overseas in Europe for ten years. This film is charged with explosive feelings of nostalgia and regret as Andres faces all the characters from his past at a homecoming during his brother's birthday party where he encounters the long lost love of his life, Beatriz, played by the luminous Chilean actress Blanca Lewin.

Santiago and Beatriz relive their past together through a realistically slow and poetic communication first through longing expressions and broken dialogue, accompanied by a haunting and brilliant musical score by composer Diego Fontecilla. As the film progresses, their communication flows forth until all the pent up truths of their feelings about the past are exposed. But can these two soul mates reconnect and come back together, swim back upstream to pick up where they left off ten years ago? Or have they swum too far down the river of life to go backwards?

Filmed with gorgeous cinematography as though behind a fish tank, we the viewer see the story unfold as if they too were fish inside a fish tank, swimming around, this way and that, floating as if directionless and yet with such intuitive purpose. Like a neoclassical painting of a bygone era where its subjects look at classical art and we at them through the painting, this film is of the characters watching each other through a fish tank and us watching them through the silver screen, like a fish tank. THE LIFE OF FISH is full of color, emotion and lyrical music, simply stunning and nothing short of perfection in its artistry. Marvelous and beautiful! Thank you Matias!

written by, Vanessa McMahon June 12, 2011

see trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB2RTx3IsqA

director Matias Bize