Go Fish (1994)

In short, this is an old, very low-budget, poorly acted, "artistic" movie with LOTS of profanity, graphic sex talk & some nudity/sex scenes. I watched this movie as part of a meeting with LBGTQ youth & group admins, as basis for discussion about LGBTQ experiences in the 90s vs. how things are today. I'd advise reading some background on the film & on Troche before watching it. It's a significant film in some ways, as it was Troche's early work & she's now incredibly successful, famous, etc., plus, for the time, it was daring subject matter. You should prepare yourself to NOT expect this to be a regular movie - it's not done as a story depiction in the typical way. It works very hard at being "artsy," sometimes rather too hard, IMO, but I am not a fan of that stuff anyway. I prefer getting lost in a story, for lack of a better way of putting it. As I was watching it, I thought "This must be what people used to joke about as'avant garde' cinema or 'art house' films." The acting is pretty bad, the sound is often lousy, and though some of the characters are interesting, they are portrayed woodenly. If you like off-beat artistic style filming, you'll probably enjoy it more than I did. Like instrumental jazz solos with oodles of scales, it's something that the artist, and other artists, enjoy a great deal more than the average consumer. LOL It is shot in B&W, with lots of symbolic images flitting across the screen at different points, and not always linear in story progression. One scene does not even attempt to be realistic; it's meant to make you think about the varying, often contrary, judgments made about someone who goes outside the "norm" of what's accepted sexual activity among a peer group; in this movie, lesbians are the norm - the controversy isn't about same-sex sex. Half of the content is meant to be thought-provoking in that way, and the other half is supposed to be about relationships, mostly focusing on one potential relationship. It tries, and sometimes manages, to be funny, but then you get some freakish angles, like at knee level (a shot of their blue-jean clad knees???) or closeups of someone doing dishes, and it derails the feeling of the story progressing. Sex is almost always the topic of conversation, and the characters are cliché - one sleeps around A LOT, there's one committed couple, and then the two that everyone else wants to fix up with each other. Getting the two of them together would seem fairly simple, except one is not the least bit attracted to the other, and the other has a long term, long distance "partner" that she's not broken up with yet. It's useful for discussion, but for enjoyment, the movie didn't suit me.

I wanted so badly for this movie to be good.But it's terrible. The acting was awful, to begin with. Max (Guinevere Turner) is the only person onscreen with any semblance of acting ability, but it's possible that I was merely distracted by her prettiness. The characters are strange and difficult to relate to, except perhaps again the central character Max. The film tries so hard to be arty and highbrow, but succeeds only in being pretentious and utterly ridiculous. Skip this one. Sigh.

Even if you live in Park Slope, and your idea of a big time is a cup of herbal tea, a Sweet Honey in the Rock CD, and a curl-up with a volume of Audre Lorde, this suicide-inducing lesbian indie will probably have you craving a late Steven Seagal feature, a chili dog, and a six pack of Miller Genuine Draft. Characteristic moment: poker-faced non-actor erupts, "Hey you guys! Does our community really have to get down on an empowered woman who's in charge of her sexuality?"

Wow, what an awesome movie! Right after I watched it I immediately had to watch it again. Be warned that it IS an artsy film. But if you like black and white film, interesting cinematography, and a cute story then you'll eat it up just like I did. This movie portrays lesbians in a positive light and deals with relationship issues that many of us can relate to. It shows you that the right girl is out there. And the right girl might not be your ideal girl but you have to give it a chance. Most people notice how cute the character Max is but I think Ely is also cute in her own way and as the movie goes on she becomes cuter as Max likes her more. I'd recommend this movie to anyone that wants to see a cute positive lesbian love story.