Sad Fish

Orchid Lam Quynh in SAD FISH, directed by Le-Van Kiet.

Sad Fish is the second feature for this young filmmaker who is anything but conventional.  In this film, Le Van Kiet experiments with a non-linear, improvised script (yes, I said “improvised” a la Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise).  Yet, it feels so natural that it is difficult to imagine how it could be better with scripted dialogue.  Although most of us have already seen three of the four main characters in title roles of other films, their acting this time feels completely different from anything they have done before.  Most of them have been type-casted for certain roles; however, Sad Fish will shatter those preconceptions.

Building on the his last film, Dust of Life (Bui Doi), Kiet continues to reveal stories within the Vietnamese community in Little Saigon, but this time he talks about the even darker side of our community masked by the Mercedes-driving, Banana-Republic-wearing, American-dream-living good folks who behind this façade have surmounting debts and live a life of loneliness and desperation.

Set in present-day Little Saigon, Sad Fish follows four characters who have suffered a kind of loss and for whom this is (or appears to be) their final day existing in their current state.  They are almost trapped in their glass-bowl worlds looking out, yet, unable to reach the other world they see-much like a fish in an aquarium.  An older woman (Kieu Chinh, Face, Journey From the Fall) resolving to die this day, leaves her home and all her worldly possessions behind to journey an existential path to her expected “death.”  A foreign-exchange student (Orchid Lam Quynh, Asia music series) is desperate to stay in the U.S. at any cost, except by actually working hard.  A failed real-estate agent (Long Nguyen, Green Dragon, Journey From the Fall) loses his job and his sanity, but still has his wits about him.  Finally, a young man (Jayvee Mai, The Anniversay, Journey From the Fall) is forced to confront a secret he has kept in the closet.  Their four separate paths converge to an emotionally tense ending, when everyone’s true limits are tested and where the truth and real life is never black or white.

- Tram Le