Movie Review : ‘Fish’ Sensitively Catches Human Nature

The most important remark in Rose Troche’s quirky lesbian romantic comedy “Go Fish” occurs when, leaving a theater, a woman says she didn’t think the filmmaker was trying to “represent the entire gay community . . . that’s a lot to ask.”

This observation applies directly to Troche, who’s introducing us to a close-knit group of young women living in Chicago, many of whom like to dress like boys, a grungy look that isn’t going to appeal to all lesbians, nor should it have to.

The irony is that the low-budget “Go Fish,” which exhilaratingly proclaims Troche and her co-writer and star Guinevere Turner as fresh and lively talents, could just turn out to be a crossover success. Troche and company have an amusing but sensitive take on human nature that transcends sexual orientation and a consistently original and witty way of expressing it. Surely, straights as well as gays can identify with the vicissitudes of dating that plague the film’s pretty but tart heroine, Max (Turner), who’s as pert as a young Debbie Reynolds. Max is the woman who doesn’t like the unidentified movie, and defending it is her new acquaintance Ely (V. S. Brodie).

It has taken a certain amount of good-natured maneuvering and pressuring on the part of mutual friends to get the two women to go out together. First of all, Max, who’s aptly described by a pal as a “total babe,” spells out her initial response to Ely: U-G-L-Y. Beanpole thin and long nosed, Ely is decidedly plain and shy to boot. Besides, she considers herself attached; never mind that her lover has been living in Seattle for two years and that Ely has seen her only three times in that time. But Ely has a radiant smile and a sweet, gentle nature. Besides, Max finds it so unexpectedly easy to talk to Ely.

Their friends couldn’t be more caught up in matchmaking than the women in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” and their bemused but loving concern allows us to get to know them as well. Principal are Max’s roommate, her onetime professor Kia (T. Wendy McMillan), who specializes in women’s studies and is an ample, formidably but humorously intellectual black woman who has just commenced a romance with an attractive Latina, Evy (Migdalia Melendez). Then there’s Daria (Anastasia Sharp), the playgirl of the group, a bartender who unapologetically constantly moves from one woman to the next but is as convinced as Kia that Max and Ely are made for each other.

A delightful storyteller, Troche comes up with wholly unexpected and consistently effective bits of visual punctuation--there’s much cutting to expressive shots of hands--and she has a subtle way with sensuality and a secure touch with non-professional actors. Admittedly, Max’s growing sexual attraction to Ely is a stretch, which could have been slackened helpfully by Ely merely ditching the world’s clunkiest eyeglasses at the same time she goes in for a radical new hairstyle. But then “Go Fish’s” parting shot is, that “the girl you’re going to meet doesn’t look like any girl you know.”

* MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes blunt language about lesbian sexuality, discreet nudity and sensuality, adult themes .

‘Go Fish’

Guinevere Turner: Max

V.S. Brodie: Ely

T. Wendy McMillan: Kia

Migdalia Melendez: Evy

Anastasia Sharp: Daria

A Samuel Goldwyn presentation in association with Islet of a Can I Watch Pictures/KVPI production. Writers-producers Rose Troche, Guinevere Turner; directed and edited by Troche. Cinematographer Ann T. Rossetti. Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes.

* In limited release in Southern California.