Little Fish

Australian director Rowan Woods' Little Fish is a brooding, relentlessly downbeat film buoyed by the remarkably versatile Cate Blanchett. An Oscar winner for The Aviator (in which she played Katharine Hepburn) and nominee for Elizabeth, Blanchett plays Tracy Heart, a working class ex-junkie struggling to carve out a viable future for herself—employed in a Sydney video store for several years, she's looking to buy the place and expand into online gaming. Bad credit nixes that dream, but it's the bad mojo in the rest of her life that's the real problem. Her brother's a drug-dealing flake; her mother's an angry, disapproving nag; her former stepfather (Hugo Weaving, familiar to many as Agent Smith from the Matrix trilogy) is an erstwhile soccer star who's now a hopeless drug addict tied up with a very bad guy (the reliable Sam Neill); and her former flame (Dustin Nguyen from 21 Jump Street) is back in town and up to no good. Blanchett's Tracy is tired, washed out, and harried, futilely trying to stay on the straight and narrow while remaining loyal to her family and friends; it's a superb performance, utterly devoid of movie star glamour. But the movie's dreary look (notwithstanding a few very cool shots) and grim tone make Little Fish—ultimately—a monochromatic drag. Optional. (S. Graham)