Sour minnows is the kind of film that will ensnare and captivate half of its audience while completely alienating the other half. If you’re in the first group, you’ll likely find yourself fascinated by the broken storyline and questions the film poses. The other half will find themselves frustrated by the lack of answers and constant resets. And I think both sides are right. Sour minnowswhich recently had its world premiere at Fantasia Fest, follows an intriguing, but stilted, path and asks a lot of questions it can’t or won’t answer. But it explores many interesting ideas that will captivate and frustrate audience members in equal measure.
The film stars David Brown as Ricky, a movie buff living a flawed and lackadaisical life in Los Angeles. He has a job he hates (listening and reviewing AI transcripts), a roommate whose company he enjoys (Tepper, played by Chase Williamson), and a romantic prospect in the form of Aura (Suzanna Son). He and Tepper both have ideas of things they want to do and projects they want to work on, but nothing actually comes to fruition.
On their way home from the grocery store, Ricky and Tepper discover a strange sight: a small group of people, kneeling on the road, licking the asphalt. It’s a strange moment, played as an almost secret sexual act that they unwittingly disrupted. They continue their journey without any knowledge of the importance of this moment or the impact it will have on their lives as they move forward.
From that moment on, life took a strange turn. The boundaries of reality seem softer, more flexible. Ricky suddenly finds himself wasting time; he’ll be out in the world, minding his own business, and then suddenly he’ll find himself in a completely different place – sometimes even in the middle of a conversation. The things he claims to remember seem to never have happened, and he has no memory of what he was doing seconds ago. Is he slowly losing his mind, or is something more complex happening?
Harrison Atkins’ film is complex. It plays the roles of science fiction film, drag comedy, and psychological reflection, without ever fully committing to any particular genre. It examines much of the detail of our current reality (the still-hidden presence of AI, our own isolation, the constant feeling of uncertainty) and then begins to ask questions around the idea of that reality being upended in a grand, but unknowable, way.
Many of the themes and questions raised by the film were born from this concept. How do we react to the impossible? How can we process something so important and move forward? Some might panic, while others will accept it. Will we struggle with the truth? Where will we find stability in the unknown?
The film is disturbing, but in a way that’s hard to describe. Much like how Ricky and Tepper struggle to master their reality, the film’s themes come and go and are difficult to pin down. We see that they don’t understand the space they are in, we see their confusion and fear (very well communicated, I might add), but we don’t know the full context of the moment. We do not understand the limits of this new space better than they do. In the end, Atkins’s audience feels as adrift as his characters in their new reality.
Atkins does a great job of cementing this difficult atmosphere with the way he shoots the film. From the opening scene, we get a lot of close-ups and awkward camera angles. Claustrophobic moments give way to sweeping shots that feel directionless and surreal. We are part of it as much as the characters. Sour minnows isn’t a film that’s going to play for everyone, but it knows that. He is very aware of what it is about and has no intention of trying to put the audience at ease. Sitting with that discomfort is what makes it so interesting.
Movie score: 3/5
