Little Fish (2021) (a film mini-review by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper).

‘Little Fish’ is a near-future Science Fiction story about a memory loss virus. However, the societal implications are only somewhat touched on: Emma, the narrator, talks about a man who forgot how to steer his boat and a pilot that forgot how to fly and ‘the woman in the marathon who forgot to stop running‘. That last one seems like a totally different sort of forgetting that anything else in the film.

We also see more dogs in the pound where Emma works, apparently because more people forget to close their gates. People start to get ‘memory tattoos’, with names, or phone numbers, or addresses. They cannot just write themselves notes, because they don’t remember to look at a notebook in their pocket, or as Jude asks, ‘How am I going to know I forgot?’

There are also obvious parallels on the international level to the COVID-19 situation but the film is primarily a story of a couple, one of whom is starting to show symptoms of the virus. The wife Emma (played by Olivia Cooke) is a veterinarian; the husband Jude (played by Jack O’Connell) is a photographer (ironic, given that the virus wipes out the sorts of memories he makes permanent in his occupation).

This has echoes of ‘Memento’ and of a Science Fiction story in which there are the equivalent of memory tattoos. The title may refer to Dora in ‘Finding Nemo’ or possibly to the speech about goldfish’s memory in ‘Hear My Song’.

Released theatrically 02/05/21; available on DVD and various streaming services, now.

Rating: +2 (-4 to +4), or 7/10.

Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper

(c) Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper 2022