"It is a vacuous and predictable
'looking for love' story that is surprisingly entertaining due to its fast-pace."
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Writer-director Elizabeth Gill's "Goldfish Memory" is a light-hearted
romantic/comedy that looks at the love life of one middle-aged womanizing
poetry professor, Tom (Sean Campion), and tells a number of interconnected
stories about mostly self-absorbed twentysomethings doing their dating
thing in contemporary Dublin. Gill has studied under Martin Scorsese, Todd
Haynes, and Barry Levinson, but you wouldn't know it from this harmless
film. It features an attractive ensemble cast and tells a sitcom-like story
about exploring the truths of different ways to love: straight, gay and
bisexual. It offers a healthy libertine view about diversity in sex, but
takes no further chances than leaning on clichés to cover the assortment
of singles falling in and out of love without offering anything but weak
comedic responses to their realistic love life problems.
Tom's rap to the gullible coeds he hits on starts with him comparing
a goldfish's three-second memory to how human love is also that quickly
forgotten. When student activist Clara (Fiona O'Shaughnessy) catches her
Tom kissing Isolde, a student he woos by having her whisper something German
in his ear, she dumps him for a lesbian relationship with local older reporter
Angie (Flora Montgomery). But Clara also sours on Angie when she turns
out to be a possessive drag (she berates Clara for being bisexual and hanging
out with stud Conzo). The now free Isolde who dumped the clinging prof,
responds to Clara's aggressive advances and begins a week-at-a-time arrangement.
Angie for solace seeks out the warm shoulder of her gay bicycle messenger
friend Red (Keith McErlean), which strangely leads them into the bedroom
for sex. Red beams because he's happy he just scored straight bartender
David, who he unexpectedly met. When Rosie finds out David's gay she goes
into a snit and boots him out of her flat, and without thinking things
through tries to coerce her new boyfriend Larry into an inconceivable marriage.
When Red finds out he's to be a father he's overcome with joy, while Angie
tries to figure out how she's to break the news to her new lover Kate.
The entire film is made up of a chain reaction of such tenuous romances
of every stripe, all who cannot live without love. What love means varies
from some wanting marriage to others wanting only a temporary relationship.
It is a vacuous and predictable 'looking for love' story that is
surprisingly entertaining due to its fast-pace, colorful photography of
Dublin, and cheery manner it skips over all these merry-go-round ride relationships.
But none of the stories were memorable or seemed original, and the scene
of Tom rushing to tell his new girlfriend Renee before she boards a plane
for America that he's ready to commit to marriage was a heavy-handed steal
from The Graduate.