Little Fish (2020)

In hindsight, I appreciate more and more this drama about gaining and losing love and memories. A dangerous, contagious illness sweeps the world, causing patients to lose their memories. It's based on a 2011 short story by Aja Gabel (you can read it here) and adapted and shot in the spring of 2019, entirely before COVID-19.

Olivia Cooke stars (and executive produced) and her love interest is played by Jack O'Connell. Their close friends are Soko and Raul Castillo and all the acting is quite good but it's told somewhat out of sync. Once you know that, it makes more sense.

Chad Hartigan directs from the screen adaptation by Mattson Tomlin. I prefer the French and Portuguese titles, which translate to "If I Forget You...I Love You" and "Memories of a Love," respectively. There is a little fish but it's, well, little.

Shot in Seattle, Vancouver, and other British Columbia locations including "the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Coast Salish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam nations," it is set in Canada, although Cooke speaks with her real British accent and O'Connell, though he is Irish, speaks with an accent defined in imdb as Canadian.

The eerie soundtrack by Keegan DeWitt can be streamed on Apple Music and elsewhere.

The is Cooke's third (COVID) pandemic release, and she was blogged for the other two: Pixie and Sound of Metal. O'Connell was last in these pages for Money Monster, Castillo for We the Animals, Hartigan for Morris from America, and DeWitt for Her Smell. Soko (a musician née Stephanie Sokolinski--she performs onscreen and off) provided one of the many voices in Her, though I didn't mention it, and this is Tomlin's third screenplay.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics aren't forgetting this, averaging 91% and its audiences aren't far behind at 80. We streamed it on Hulu on November 25.

Note, I just read the Gable short story (link above) for the first time. It has similarities and many differences with the movie. If anyone had asked me, I would say that the screenplay was inspired by the story, rather than based on it.