catfish

It’s amazing to watch the family dynamic at work sometimes. There is of course the blood ties that we are born into, but what gets truly interesting, is when we see a new person come into a family’s orbit, and watch that new person get adopted by the family as a whole.

That beautiful act, and the rewards that come with it, are at the heart of THE AMAZING CATFISH, a beautiful new Mexican film.

When the film begins, we meet Claudia (Ximena Ayala), an isolated woman in her mid-twenties, working in a supermarket, with not much going right in her life. Not long after we meet her, she is admitted to the hospital for appendicitis. Once there, she meets a woman lying in the bed next to her. The woman’s name is Martha, and she is in the hospital for an undisclosed chronic illness.

As the two women bond over potato chips, they form an unlikely friendship. Seeing that Claudia has very little to go home to, Martha offers to take her in. Seeing that Martha has her hands full as a single mom of four children, Claudia agrees. What then begins is Claudia’s journey as surrogate mother, daughter, and older sister.

There is so much tenderness going on in THE AMAZING CATFISH that it’s difficult to know where to start. Much of the film builds itself on a foundation of caregiving – which is the tie that binds Claudia and Martha. It’s something that we all go through at some point in our lives, on one end of the equation or the other, and it’s a situation that can be difficult to capture with grace. This film does it splendidly, and with a great deal of honesty. It underlines how the best of us can start looking after someone since it’s “what needs to be done”. It also shows the way we put on a brave face and try to hide what’s hurting us, in the hopes we can be less of a burden.

The film also doesn’t shy away from the ripple effect of a chronic illness. Sometimes when our parents are sick, and the children must become the parents, they’ll also feel the desire to be children again: specifically, they’ll make a cry for attention. THE AMAZING CATFISH illustrates this without any theatrics or melodrama…just good honest storytelling.

At one point, Martha is asked how she feels, and she responds most honestly by saying “Empty”. It’s the sort of answer one doesn’t often hear in a film, and it’s the sort of answer one doesn’t often give even if it’s the most honest one. It’s that level of honesty and grace that makes THE AMAZING CATFISH so beautiful. It’s a wonderful directorial debut by Claudia Sainte-Luce, and one I sincerely hope gets seen by a wider audience.