CATE BLANCHETT TURNS IN A DEEPLY VULNERABLE PERFORMANCE AS AN EX-DRUG ADDICT UNABLE TO BUILD A NEW LIFE FOR HERSELF IN LITTLE FISH. AN EXTRAORDINARY SUPPORTING CAST—INCLUDING HUGO WEAVING, SAM NEILL AND DUSTIN NGUYEN—EXPANDS HER STORY OF ADDICTION AND THWARTED REDEMPTION.
Tracy Heart (Blanchett) lives with her mother in Sydney’s predominantly Vietnamese Little Saigon district. She works in a video shop but wants to open her own Internet cafe. However, she cannot get credit with banks because of her past. At the same time she cares for her former surrogate dad, Lionel (Weaving), a junkie who has recently been cut off by a local crime boss (Neill). Many worlds collide when Tracy’s ex-boyfriend (Nguyen) comes home to put ‘once last score’ into motion. Eschewing the junkie theatrics of so much independent
cinema, director Rowan Woods (The Boys) understands that people who have been lost in addiction often place themselves beyond help. They are prepared to spit on those who make attempts to rescue them, while embracing those who seek to exploit them. Woods does
not glamorise anything about the sorry lives of his middle-class heroin users but he also refuses to let them be defined solely as victims. He is a careful film-maker, setting a pace that builds slowly and allowing us time to absorb the dilemmas that his characters face. The
cinematic mood of the film is equally languid and considered: a thoughtful film about people trying desperately to make right what has gone so sadly wrong for them in the past.—Noah Cowan.