The Golden Bowl

Glossy romantic comedy is not a genre that's used very often to describe low-budget Irish cinema. But Liz Gill's digital opus is just that. After its world premiere in Dublin earlier this year, Joe Griffin caught up with the writer and director of Goldfish Memory, a mainstream comedy disguised as an independent Irish film.

Joe Griffin: Were you relieved to see it with an audience for the first time?

Liz Gill: Yeah. We were delighted that we got such a good turnout. And they seemed to laugh, so that was good. I mean I'm always slightly wary but it seemed generally like a pretty good response. So yes, relieved.

And with a film like this you can watch and edit it until kingdom come but you won't know if it works unless you're watching with an objective viewer...

Absolutely. It's always a bit of a gamble. I think even for more experienced people they never really know until they see an audience response. Especially with something like this that is slightly offbeat or not obviously mainstream. It was great how there was such a variety of people who seemed to enjoy it.

Romantic comedies are hard to do because romance can become schmaltz so easily and it's genuinely hard to make people laugh. As a genre, so much can go wrong so easily. Did that intimidate you?

It's always an issue. I mean the joke is that there were times when we would say "Yeah, schmaltz it up here!" Hopefully we've tried to avoid that at the moments when things are getting borderline schmaltzy or corny; we try to subvert them pretty quickly. I hope.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 94