Weekend Watch: Little Fish And Malcolm & Marie
Love is lost to a pandemic and an intimate drama creates sparks
Image Credit: IFC Films
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, relationships are battered by a pandemic or unraveled by bitterness.
Though written and shot before the current world pandemic swallowed our lives and attention, Chad Hartigan’s low-key romance Little Fish could hardly be more pertinent to how the world has changed. Adapted from Aja Gabel’s short story by Mattson Tomlin (Project Power and the upcoming The Batman), the film is told from the point of view of Emma (Olivia Cooke) as she tries to hold together the fragments of her marriage to Jude (Jack O’Connell). Their relationship, like everything in their world, is being torn apart by Neuro Inflammatory Affliction, or NIA, a fast-spreading virus that either starts slowly wiping memories from sufferers’ brains or snaps them away in a scary instant. Around the world, people are starting to forget loved ones, skills, or their own personalities, and Emma has already had to deal with the pain of learning that her mother – miles away in the UK while Emma lives in Seattle – is showing signs of the virus.
But that’s nothing compared to the heartbreak that’s on the way. As one friend of the couple struggles with it, so Jude slowly begins to lose his own memories, relying on notes scribbled on the back of polaroids to remind himself of his wife, or the fact that he has a dog. Tomlin’s script is a carefully assembled descent into the sorrow, tempered by the hope for a potential cure. And Hartigan plays with time, keeping you feeling like the characters, who constantly seem unmoored by the unfolding drama.
The budget might be modest, but the world is brought into full-colour life by smart choices as to how to cover the spreading plague: little hot spots such as a bus driver simply forgetting what he’s supposed to be doing and walking off the job (fortunately for the passengers, the vehicle is stopped at the time), or a woman freaking out because she finds herself on a whale watching trip without knowing how she got there or who this strange man who claims to be her husband. There’s also a higher tension than even we’ve experienced in this pandemic – as clinical trials show hopeful progress, there are riots when the populace starts to think the government is holding the solution back.
This really is Emma and Jude’s story though, and Cooke and O’Connell (she keeps her native accent, he’s convincingly American) are more than up to the task. Your heart will break for both of them as you follow their story from first meeting (or is it?) through love, marriage, and time together before the spectre of memory loss comes calling. And, while it can be seen as a metaphor for Covid, the emotional trauma more clearly resembles the tragedy of dementia, of parents forgetting children, losing favourite memories, of personalities shifting and warping as the problem takes hold. Anyone who has been through the drip-feed horror of losing a loved one long before they die will relate. The film sidesteps cliché and schmaltz for clear-eyed exploration of a love that has a shadow hanging over it. It might not cheer you up on a rainy pandemic afternoon, but it has more to say and offer than simple sadness.
Little Fish is on limited US release now, and on all major Digital and VoD platforms.
Image Credit: Netflix
Malcolm & Marie makes no mention of the Coronavirus, but it was shot last year under safety protocols after Zendaya reached out to her Euphoria boss Sam Levinson to see if he had any ideas for projects they could work on while the HBO drama was on a Covid-driven production pause. He whipped together a script and directed the film in 22 days at a beautiful, remote house, bringing in Tenet’s John David Washington to co-star. The result is a talky, artfully crafted experience that explodes with vocal fireworks. Unfolding as up-and-coming filmmaker Malcolm and his girlfriend Marie return home from the successful premiere of his latest movie, it’s clear from the start that something is simmering below the surface – and it’s not just the mac and cheese that is cooked early on.
Turns out, Malcolm forgot to thank Marie in the speech he gave after the film, and that has set off a domino effect of underlying anger and resentment between the couple. Add to that the fact that the movie drew from some of Marie’s experiences, and you have the stage set for all sorts of issues to come spilling out.
Levinson keeps the visual style monochrome and realistic and lets the performances do the work, making Malcolm & Marie feel, even more than, say One Night In Miami like you’re watching a play. But one that crackles with energy and never feels stagey. Small moments fall into the trap of speech, but there is more than enough entertainment to drive the story along as the couple bicker and scrap. Both Zendaya and Washington give as good as they get, as the conflict winds around the many corners where they disagree. And there’s a discussion of critical reaction, of white critical guilt when discussing black creators (which is saying something given that this is from a white writer/director working with black stars). But while the cultural debate is valid, it never swallows the drama.
Malcolm & Marie is available on Netflix now.