Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Lala is in love with her maid Ailin whom she has known since she was 13. They plan to steal from Lala's Argentinian family and run away back to Ailin's Paraguay home town on the lake. There is a mysterious legend of the Fish Child at the lake. Ailin is caught for the thieve and refuses to turn on Lala. The detention center has a dark secret and Lala strives to retrieve her love in a daring escape.The two women are compelling characters and there is a nice forbidden love going on. The chemistry is OK but could be better. The movie could have a better flow. It is edited in a time-jumping disjointed way. It's not the best way to establish chemistry for the couple and for the flow of their journey. Time jumbos are not fit for everything. The movie stumbles a few times and the last act is where the movie fumbles. It's all jammed together with sex slavery, the escape, and the reveal of the legend. The worst is the overly emotional reaction to her dead dog in the middle of the shootout. I kind of chuckled when they carried both the injured and the dead dog as they escaped. The movie has some interesting aspects but overall, it is a slight miss.

Lucía Puenzo and star Inés Efrón unite for an LGBT follow-up to their above-average XXY. This time their focus is on the L part of that acronym as evidenced by the sexy DVD cover. For a second film, it's a slight improvement over its predecessor, not finding an interest in the transgendered romance (itself an intriguing topic) to sustain itself. Without such a crutch, Puenzo's limitations and development as a filmmaker are more visible. She has now made two good films but lacks the discipline to be great.Puenzo has not learned how to incorporate surrealist and metaphorical imagery properly into her films. Like the clownfish shots of XXY, the phantasmagoria in The Fish Child is given its own separate sequence in which it to take place. The efficacy of these scenes is risible; they are there serving an indulgent purpose (this is a self-adaption of Puenzo's novel). She should to consider the meat floating in Buñuel's Los Olvidados, to name another Latin American example. Surrealism doesn't need to occur; its inclusion is appropriately conceived if a structured narrative is present.Fortunately, Puenzo's editor has structured the film in such a way that it slowly unveils its predetermined story, avoiding the thriller clichés the DVD box claims the movie offers. With this detraction of plot comes greater opportunity to explore the characters' repressed queer femininity that is caught between girlhood and womanhood. They frequent nightclubs, where lecherous men hit on them, and they are shown chatting about their affections as the film progresses. Their chats occur in isolated places like a bathtub or a prison while the camera follows them exclusively. Puenzo suggests the idea that their self-actualization may only occur in places away from society, which few queer films address (they are too concerned with "otherness"). Thus, is not exploitative of its characters or indulgent of its queerness despite the promulgation of critics and marketers. The Fish Child is the rare GLBT film that is worth watching even it doesn't represent much improvement over XXY.Recommended

This movie gives an steady view into the existing relationships of the protagonist's family.The movie keeps the context, yet change frames to show differences of human nature. The outcomes are sometimes drastic, sometime pleasant.The urban lifestyle of Argentina and rural landscape of Paraguay have been used to show the contrasts. The protagonist plays a simple girl with honest emotions. Her lover on the other hand is a maze. She has a range of emotional and physical connections to different people, who form a part of her existence. The former, with a good fortune and privileged life, the latter with a rustic background and tragic life. She keeps spinning misery around herself under different circumstances,that ultimately affect her lover so much that she is ready to run away to a different country. The movie picks up pace and keep changing locations to keep audience interested.It would be good to watch this on a Tuesday evening as a mid week thought breaker.

excerpt, full review at my location - The writer/director of the synopsis- defying Argentine intersexuality melodrama XXY follows up her directorial debut with this adaptation of her own novel. With Inés Efron returning as another gay protagonist, Puenzo this time treads more traditional ground with her lesbian noir drama, but is the result Argentina's answer to the Wachowshi brothers' Bound or a case of a difficult second album depreciating the promise of the first?There's plenty of intrigue in this film for it to be of interest, and while it often fails to deliver on its promises, Lucía Puenzo is not on the list of Argentine directors you'd be wise to ignore. But given her impressive prior work, The Fish Child represents an overall disappointing work from an artist we've been given reason to expect more from.