Anne Consigny

A musician conditioned by his anti-capitalistic beliefs, struggling to make a living for his wife and young daughter, finds hope from a runaway Parisian artist trying to escape the shadows of her famous painter mother. Shot like any other independent film expected from a beginning filmmaker, Lola Bessis’ dramatic comedy branches out and is smartly defined by layers of inner conflict. With New York City playing as the film’s backdrop of emotion, Swim Little Fish Swim can easily fall into today’s better city-based dramadies. It’s relatable in conflict, yet unique in effects. It’s loud in its choices of art and music, yet refreshing when establishing character relationships. There are elements in the film we have not seen on the big screen, and there are elements that feel all too familiar. It’s both large at heart, but small in scope. It’s everything chaotic and silent one would expect from life’s inner toil, making it a direct observation of life in the big city.

Satisfying the hunger of movie and television consumers in dire need of original content grows more difficult with each and every passing year. Not only do the people who produce content want to release more of the same but the very fact of the matter is that nearly every story has already been told. What bold, creative new ideas can emerge in this early 21st century in which the quantity of the content grows exponentially at a dizzying rate? Making a television show that looks, sounds and most importantly feels like no other is no small order. One option is to genre mash, that is, splicing two or more disparate genres together to make something that, while familiar, at least tries to take old material in a fresh direction. Easier said than done however.