Go Fish Director: Rose Troche

Rip It Up, Issue 210, 1 February 1995, Page 38

Go Fish Director: Rose Troche

Gone are the days when to be lesbian meant you had to hang yourself (Shirley MacLaine in The Children's Hour), turn dipso in a tweed jacket (Beryl Reid in The Killing of Sister George) or have lethal spikes shoot out of your

brogues (Lotte Lenya in From Russia with Love). Max, the foxy hero of Go Fish (played by Genevieve Turner, who co-scripted the film) is, in her own words, "a carefree, single lesbo looking for love”. This is precisely what she does, along with a number of other women, for most of the film.

These women are totally ‘out’ and making their own decisions about life. From time to time an overhead camera catches a cluster of faces rapping on a variety of subjects, most hilariously on what might be the best word for the female genitalia (‘honey-pot’ is the general consensus). The film’s freewheeling, often elliptical style, punctuating the narrative with potent recurring images, gives it a marvellous buoyancy. There’s no room for guilt — in fact, a scene in which one women is berated by an assembly of political dykes for having sex with a man seems rather ironically intended. The women can be bitchy (Max in the coffee shop), flirtatious

(the coming together of Max and Ely) and they don’t put up with no shit (Evy’s confrontation with her family). Well, as the song says: “That’s Life..."

WILLIAM DART