Mother Fish (M). Director: Khoa Do. Starring: Kathy Nguyen, Sheena Pam, Hieu Phan, Vico Thai. 92 minutes
'Behind every headline, every policy and every queue ... is a human face.' Former Young Australian of the Year Khoa Do's latest film Mother Fish is an exercise in empathy. It recreates the treacherous sea journey made by two young sisters (Nguyen, Pam) and two men (Phan, Thai) as they travel as refugees from Vietnam to Australia.
There is a depth of personal experience contained in the film. Do and his family came to Australia as refugees when Do was an infant. The principal cast members all came to Australia as refugees from Vietnam (Phan was a so-called 'boat person' way back in 1979), except Nguyen, who was born in Australia to refugee parents.
This lends authenticity to performances that otherwise lack in professional skill. Do previously achieved something similar in his film The Finished People (2003), a pseudo documentary in which real-life Sydney street kids dramatised fictionalised versions of their own lives. The result is poignant but not always effective.
Do also takes a non-naturalistic approach to staging the story. This method is intriguing but not entirely successful. The action takes place inside a textile factory, where one of the girls, as an adult, recalls her long-ago voyage on a dilapidated river boat. As she remembers, the factory becomes the setting of those memories: the benches form the outline of the boat; the floorboards stand in for ocean. Sound effects and swaying camera help evoke the undulating, watery surroundings.
Mother Fish was originally conceived as live theatre. In that context, where audiences are expected to imagine locations that could not possibly be recreated on stage, this abstract staging would have been effective. On film, it is distracting, and actually keeps the characters at an emotional distance. There is no chance of 'losing yourself' in their story, because it's not possible to forget that you are watching a film.
This is a fundamental problem, as it undermines Do's primary intention, which is to put his audience into the shoes of refugees travelling by boat, and thereby to force them to experience empathy for the characters and their counterparts in our real world. Why, then, not make the filming as naturalistic, as realistic, as possible?
Still, there is no doubting the sincererity of Do's desire to educate, rather than simply entertain. Mother Fish is the first in a planned