“What are goldfish supposed to look like originally?” asks Monsoon Blue, the short film directed by duo Jay Hiukit Wong and Ellis Kayin Chan.
Set in the cloistered urban sprawl of a monsoon-beset Hong Kong, the animated film explores the inner turmoil of a troubled woman, Summer, who runs a struggling pet fish store. Breaking down the boundaries between the internal and the external, Monsoon Blue is a bizarre, dream-like experience. Between Summer’s struggles with her nameless discontent, a parallel exploration of a cherished childhood memory, and an abundance of fish imagery, the short film makes an inquiry that, upon consideration, is surprising in its enormity.
The movie employs an animation style that fluidly blends the real with the symbolic, introducing elements of magical realism along the way. The overall tone is one of suffocation, of being trapped — between Summer’s troubling listlessness, and the constant, gruesome focus on the fishes that are wasting away in their little plastic bags.
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Amidst this, a few symbols draw strong attention: the fish themselves as representative of Summer’s inner reality, possibly even her soul; then the rain, as it builds into a destructive storm, takes meaning as the psychological force, or the climactic psychic event that forces transformation onto an individual.
Monsoon Blue is sufficiently mysterious in how this spiritual journey plays out; as the childhood memory slowly unveils itself in bits and pieces, Summer’s life running the fish store turns upside down in a direct representation of the growing pressure of the discontent that seems to follow her everywhere.
The movie doesn’t care to connect the dots. “Did something happen that I can’t remember?” Summer asks, but concludes that it’s not that important. Monsoon Blue does an effective job of recreating the uncomfortable feeling of a soul on the cusp of change — gasping for air, disoriented, and struggling to grasp onto a foundational meaning to define oneself.
The original form of a goldfish? That might as well be the original state of the soul itself, naturally joyful in its freedom.
The 28th edition of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival runs in-person and online November 13-24. For tickets, scheduling, and other details about this year’s programming, visit the festival’s website.
