It's always disappointing when a pretentious filmmaker ruins a good idea. Of course, a film is one person's take on a story, but in most cases, you would hope that even if you didn't feel satisfied by the majority of a film, you would find some redeeming qualities. Unfortunately, Year of the Fish came so dangerously close to insulting me, as an aspiring filmmaker, that I was nearly convinced I could move to Hollywood tomorrow and be a director before I had time to hit up a Starbucks.
The idea is an interesting one: take the classic story of Cinderella, and transport it to New York's Chinatown. Our heroine becomes a Chinese immigrant who, in the search for a job, lands in a "massage parlor." Certainly a bold adaptation to say the least, but unfortunately, writer/director David Kaplan turned that idea into a movie that seems to be only a showcase for a new animation technique that is better suited for a short rather than a feature.
Let us start with the narrative. The story is intriguing, but the script is not. Full of cliches and absurd dialogue, it is hard to take any scene seriously. If Kaplan wanted to be really bold, he should have made the entire movie in Chinese (it's a bit hard to believe that, even when there are no customers around, all the inhabitants of Chinatown would speak English to each other). Additionally, although it's not clear that it was written this way, nearly every character speaks in broken English, which plays more like an insult than an attempt at realism. Finally, given that Fish is an adaptation of Cinderella, the story is, by nature, fairly contrived, but that (finally) is not completely the fault of the filmmaker.
The biggest draw for Year of the Fish is naturally going to be the animation technique, and it certainly is impressive. Using special animation software, the entire film is rendered to look almost like a watercolor painting. Part of the reason why this was done was likely to show the film through the eyes of its narrator, the pet goldfish of our protagonist (yes, a goldfish), but the technique really belongs in short pieces rather than in a feature film. The most frustrating part about this decision is that it distracts the viewer from the best part about this movie: the cinematography. Kaplan composes many dramatic and beautiful shots, but the audience becomes focused on the bells and whistles of the animation when what's really to be marveled at are the shots themselves. Many of the transitions in the film are also very showy, and eventually it becomes clear that that the director must have been playing around in Final Cut Pro, stumbled upon a few cool filters and flashy transitions, and got a bit too excited to use them.
Year of the Fish will likely garner some acclaim for its artistic style, but little else exists to make this a film worth shelling out your $10 for. For people who appreciate the painstaking processes that go into achieving the look of a film like this (also check out A Scanner Darkly for a similar look), it may be worth taking a look at the film. Otherwise, the convoluted story, borderline offensive dialogue, and blatant wasting of great cinematography make Year of the Fish more of a cautionary tale for student filmmakers not to fall in love with a video filter than a real film. D
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