ABSTRACT
Liz Gill's 2003 feature Goldfish Memory, shot on digital video with a barebones production model under the Irish Film Board's low budget feature initiative, presents itself as a simple romantic comedy set in contemporary Dublin. On closer analysis, it is clear that the film is dialoguing with contemporary Irish culture in several interesting ways. One of the boldest aspects of the film is its presentation of sexual orientation as fluid, along with its celebratory approach to a range of sexual experiences. The film uses a relay structure to follow a group of young, hip Dubliners as they roll in and out of beds, in a looser, queerer take on Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde (1900). At first glance, Goldfish Memory follows a new trend of Irish romantic comedies that foreground their urban setting, such as About Adam (Gerard Stembridge, 2000) and When Brendan Met Trudy (Kieron J. Walsh, 2000), but with a clear focus on representing nonheterosexual attractions. 1 However, the ways in which the film punctuates a utopian sexual universe with images of Dublin as a bright metropolis significantly transform both cinematic expectations about Ireland as a geographical entity, and generic codes that guide audience expectations of romantic comedy. There is a long tradition of associating Irish identity with landscape, both within and outside the cinema, and Goldfish Memory suggests that providing new, queer images of Irish identity requires a flushing out of the existing lexicon of landscape imagery.
