“Treading Water” is a unique and comical coming-of-age film with a young boy on the adolescent journey that includes such trials as a controlling mother, a father who is utterly uninterested, no romantic interests, and on top of all that, a condition known as Trimethylaminuria or the ‘fish odor symptom’. Trimethylaminuria is an endocrine disorder that smells like fish. His condition prompted the film to be retitled from, “The Boy Who Smells Like Fish,” to whatever this current title is. One of the greatest pleasures of “Treading Water” is that writer director Analeine Cal y Mayor has managed to create such a light hearted delightful comedy from a boy who walks through life with the scent of fish. For the most part, Cal touches on the calm before the storm. The more unsettling themes, such as the feelings of constant isolation and humiliation, are slightly glossed over. Yet, it is compelling for reasons that are more baffling.
Mica is born smelling horrendous, with a terrible stench that makes the doctor attending to her delivery scrunch his nose as he handover Mica to her mother. She is portrayed by Douglas Smith. And while her mother is being portrayed by Ariadna Gil, the father is None McKellar, who many remember from his acting stint in ‘Slings and Arrows’ as the obnoxious guest director, Darran Nicholls. Concerned about the odor emitting from their child, Mica’s parents take her to a set of doctors, quacks, and even some gurnis. And while the specialists suggest a specific type of soap, the others use bizarre methods to which Mica is subjected to. The method is performed over Mica’s head with a candle lit in the room. As Mica reaches school age, he becomes a victim of bullying. Because Mica is very much aware of her awful smell, she spends a majority of her time submerged in a bathtub, where she swims around in a gorgeous blue world that provides her freedom. By the time she reaches her teenage years, Mica has been abandoned my her father and has become a recluse spending the most of her time in the local pool. Furthermore, Mica also starts wearing air fresheners. While speaking to her therapist, Carrie Anne Moss, she mentions having a crush on a girl she used to go to grade school with, Zoe Kravitz, but is hesitant about talking to her.
Because of how he smells.
Sure enough, this is all a little ridiculous, but it is heightened by the fact that Mica and his mother live in an old house that belongs to the famous Mexican singer, Guillermo Garibai (Gonzalo Vega), which has now been converted into a museum. Mica’s mother gives the tours. The walls are adorned with garishly decorated portraits of Garibai, surrounded by framed gold records, and the decor was never updated after Garibai lived there in the late 60s and early 70s. To get from the sitting room to the kitchen, you have to weave through all of the velvet ropes. Groups of Garibai fans arrive at the door glamorously dressed in colorful dresses and sporting beehive hairdos. If you have been to Graceland, you know what I mean. Garabai was their adored celebrity, their heartthrob, and they literally Ooh and Aah over everything in the house, including a broken cologne bottle kept under glass. Mica’s life has people randomly walking through his bedroom while he is showering, climbing over him, ‘And this is the room where Garibai got inspired to write the most famous song’.
Elisa Sauve was the production designer and upon seeing the set of that house, it is such a strange and loopy world that it gives away from the start that none of this is any serious. Indeed, the poor boy does smell like fish and he does not have any friends and yes all of these unfortunate events happen to his mother and father but look at the house! Cal y Mayorthat set. She squeezes every ounce of possible humor in having her lead character come from home where the glorifying idol of the Mexican Elvis, of 40 years before, lives.
Why is it that the most exquisite romances always seem to have some sort of wall surrounding them? Laura and Mica’s relationship is critical; both are hiding things from each other, and while this weight is not too extreme, it is still here. Mica does not get to bask in the peak passions of love because he is much more passively active in life than he is participating, and his overall performance suffers. He has always looked like he has low odds on winning. It’s been a miserable existence and now, he has come to terms with it. One can argue that there is no redeeming them He smells like fish, after all. There are no miracles with these types of people. It is even harder to treat a man who is perpetually underwater. As for Mica, it is even harder to escape the dreadful land draping around him. Some elements of the directorial style save “Treading Water” from simply being a Condition of the Week television movie.
“Treading Water” was reminiscent of a more dramatic Arvin Chen’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” where a levy gay man decides to marry and live life as a straight person. Despite being a rather serious topic, filled with emotional mayhem, Chen treats this, or rather, adopts a style that involves bright colors fairy tales, romance and cinematic dream sequences like a fable, combined with choreographed routine numbers people open red umbrellas and float up into the sky like Mary Poppins.
The emotions attached to the occurrence is intense, and in some sense tragic, but overall is characterized by an attempt at yearning human connection. While “Treading Water” does not quite achieve this sensitive shift of mood and tone as expertly as it could, it still has a lot to offer.
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