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The "Women’s Opening Night" selection in this year’s Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival is not so much a gay or lesbian romantic comedy as it is a Mulligan stew of frustrated sexual inclinations. Directed by Irish filmmaker Liz Gill, Goldfish Memory takes its title from the myth that the piscine attention span is three seconds, and that humans imitate that trait in matters of the heart. That’s just one of the tired pick-up lines that Tom (Sean Campion), a graying literature professor, tries out on his female students (if it works, he follows up with a volume of Rilke). Clara (Fiona O’Shaughnessy), one of Tom’s castoffs, decides to try her luck with women when Angie (Flora Montgomery), the Ellen DeGeneres–like newscaster, seduces her. Meanwhile, Angie’s gay best friend, Red (Keith McErlean), a bicycle messenger, falls for David (Peter Gaynor), a bartender whose girlfriend wants more attention. And so on. This roundelay of misplaced affections and the kindly workings of fate coasts along on the appeal of its attractive actors and generally hip dialogue, and Gill splices together the story lines for the most part with unobtrusive dexterity (though is there really only one cabdriver in all of Dublin?). Goldfish might seem a radical statement from a country noted for its conservatism in matters of sexual expression, but it’s hardly subversive. Everyone seems to have the same ultimate goal: to settle down and have lots of kids. Which makes this a formula film that only someone with the memory of a goldfish would find new. (85 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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