Lit­tle Fish

Set against the back­drop of Seat­tle slow­ly los­ing its mind to NIA, or neu­roin­flam­ma­to­ry afflic­tion, Lit­tle Fish is a film about the dis­in­te­gra­tion of a rela­tion­ship, cap­tur­ing the com­pli­cat­ed emo­tion­al stages of a young couple’s plight to res­cue their mar­riage before the dis­ease eras­es all mem­o­ry of their love and courtship.

Fad­ing over weeks or months, in oth­er cir­cum­stances van­ish­ing in just an instant, the film opens dur­ing an all too famil­iar glob­al pan­dem­ic that fol­lows vet and aspir­ing writer Emma (Olivia Cooke) and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jude (Jack O’Connell) as they grap­ple with the real­i­ties of the rapid virus, while try­ing to deal with the time they have left.

Tight­en­ing its grip on soci­ety by the sec­ond, the Alzheimer’s‑like con­di­tion makes it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to know what is true and what is false, caus­ing con­flict and mishap in such triv­ial sce­nar­ios as a bus dri­ver for­get­ting that he is dri­ving, a fish­er­man swim­ming to shore after for­get­ting how to steer a ship, or a pilot for­get­ting how to fly. With the world on the brink of calami­ty, the mis­for­tune slow­ly wedges itself between the new­ly­weds, who quick­ly see their lives shat­tered once Jude dis­cov­ers he has con­tract­ed the dread­ed virus.

As Jude slow­ly suc­cumbs to the afflic­tion, he and Emma work close­ly to ensure that some­thing of their rela­tion­ship will be pre­served, using Polaroids with small added notes as sweet memen­tos of their time togeth­er. Cooke and O’Connell’s won­der­ful per­for­mances give us faith that their char­ac­ters will find a way to recon­nect. How­ev­er, after dis­cov­er­ing that the gov­ern­ment has been work­ing on an unap­proved cure for those who have test­ed pos­i­tive for NIA, the film shifts its focus.

Blur­ring the lines between the past and the present, we start to see Emma and Jude’s close kin­ship bloom from var­i­ous points in time. From their first encounter at a water park, to shar­ing their first kiss inside a night­club and get­ting match­ing fish tat­toos as their engage­ment present to each oth­er, the sto­ry fore­grounds their romance in a way that’s pure and deeply moving.

Hartigan’s tale of young love and heal­ing makes for a beau­ti­ful yet brain-bend­ing fea­ture. Built around dream­like cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Kee­gan DeWitt’s melan­cholic score, this is an inven­tive explo­ration of the hard­ships and pain of los­ing a loved one that speaks from the heart.