So I was invited to the world premiere screening of Nicole Gomez Fisher’s directorial debut, Sleeping with the Fishes. I try to go into movie screenings without the persistent biases that plague independent Latino films that more often than not are usually founded. The state of Latino cinema is that sad.
You know what those biases are: low expectations in terms of style, execution of ideas, casting, acting, story, directing, editing, cinematography, and the entire production value. Not to mention loved and equally hated overblown negative and positive stereotypes that strip us of our humanity. I was pleasantly surprised that Nicole and crew smoothed sailed through all of them. Impressive feat, since I’m notoriously difficult to impress.
Gina Rodriguez (Filly Brown) owned the neurotic lead character of Alexis Fish. She is a tour de force of awesomeness: pretty, smart, adorable, likable, and hilarious. A true thespian. She fed off of her on-screen gelastic sister, Kayla Fish, played by Ana Ortiz (Ugly Betty) and her overbearing and insufferable mother, Estella Fish, played by Priscilla Lopez (Law & Order). The father, a gentle Jewish man played by Tibor Feldman (Law & Order), being the eye of the storm of a Latino/Jewish family, holds his own.
A year after Alexis’ husband’s death, she is still fighting a crippling depression and struggling to make ends meet (working as a phone sex operator and a walking meatball hero) because he left her with nothing in a far away city. Away from her family and friends. The back story is that she married a sociopath that came with all the usual perks and then some: a handsome, charming, manipulative, pathological, smoke and mirror machinist who had the audacity to leave with a grand finale (La Muerte). Her mother loves him, of course. And yes, even after death; she made a shrine for him.
The man didn’t have the last laugh because her astute ass sister concocted a plan -better yet- framed her to come back to Brooklyn (by using their aunt’s funeral) and stay home to renew her career as a party planner and live with her family. Here Alexis faces her biggest nemesis: her mother. Who is downright scathing, judgmental, and callous.[Hilarious too]. In a good way. At least according to her. Latino mothers are very adept at making you feel like shit just so you can get your shit together. So she badgers her about her weight, about wearing too little makeup, about anything and everything at every opportunity she gets just to get her daughter to switch gears.
The scene that stuck out the most was the heart to heart confrontation she has with her mother one night in her kitchen table. It was poignant, endearing, and an absurdly accurate depiction of the culmination of a family in crisis. Her mother tries to convince her, yet again, that image is everything; to act like a grown woman (whatever the hell that is) and get out of her depressive stupor. She tries to break an already broken Alexis; who is fighting with all of her might to get her life back together without the humiliation that indubitably comes when you have to depend on others to do so. They can’t be around each other without it turning into a bickering fest of hurtful addendums.
The movie is a chick flick, I know, but wait, being that I’m supposed to (and so do you) enjoy all genres as long as they’re well done, I truly enjoyed everything about it: the pace, the dialogue, the one-liners, the actors, and the smooth cuts and transitions [shout-out to Carlos Berrios for the great editing.
P.S. She meets the man of her dreams, Dominic Sebastiani (played by Steven Strait). P.P.S. She might or might not blow it. P.P.P.S. Go see for yourself. Don’t take it from me. Kidding. Take it from me: watch out for it.