Junkies in the myth

Award-winning Australian movie Little Fish is set in the Sydney Asian immigrant hotspot of Cabramatta - but there are so many New Zealanders in it you could easily think it's Bondi.

In its tale about lost souls and junkiedom, we see Sam Neill as The Jockey, a bisexual, drug-dealing con. Then there's Martin Henderson as Ray Heart, an amputee and dodgy younger brother of main character Tracy ( Cate Blanchett).

Joel Tobeck plays Steven Moss, The Jockey's right-hand man.

And singer-songwriter Bic Runga has a cameo as a lounge singer.

"There is a crazy Kiwi connection," laughs director Rowan Woods, "but it's just a coincidence."

Tobeck wanted the part in Woods' film so badly he auditioned in person. Normally he'd just send a tape. "It was a Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving film," laughs the Auckland-based actor. "I also love Rowan's work. I loved The Boys (1998) and I loved the Little Fish script, so it was all going in my favour."

The challenge for Tobeck was pitting his acting abilities against Blanchett, Neill, and Weaving, who is probably best known as Elrond in Lord of the Rings and as Agent Smith in The Matrix.

But Weaving's part as Lionel Dawson - a kindhearted, gay heroin addict and former professional footballer - is something else.

"To me," says Tobeck, "Hugo is a genius and such a lovely guy. If you want to see great acting then look no further than Hugo Weaving."

While Blanchett's lead role as reformed junkie Tracy is one of her best performances, it is Weaving, as Lionel, who is key to the film's success.

Woods: "It was an enormous challenge because the actors had to bury themselves in the gayness, the ex-footballer qualities, and the serious heroin-addicted aspect of the character.

"It's a big ask to make all of that credible for the audience. But the most important thing for the movie was that that character, as decrepit as he is, also had to be incredibly lovable and sympathetic.

"If Hugo had not buried himself in the role and remained sympathetic then I don't think, emotionally, the audience would go with the drift of the narrative and feel anything at the end. But people come out going through the tissues."

Little Fish, written by Woods' wife, Jacqueline Perske, is not just another junkie movie. As Woods says, most movies about drug addiction - think Trainspotting and Requiem For A Dream - deal with young characters who are still addicts. Little Fish is about the spirit of Tracy.

"A 32-year-old woman who is four years off the drug, and is desperately searching for happiness and contentment in a straight world - that automatically makes it interesting. And heroic as well, in an unusual way - the fact Jacqueline could find heroism in a 32-year-old woman from the suburbs," Woods says.

The movie is also a combination of other things: a love story, a look into the seedy drug culture of suburban Sydney and the tangled web of relationships that goes with that.

Part of Tracy's dream for a better life concerns getting a bank loan so she can open an internet cafe, but with her criminal record it's not easy. Then, with the return of ex-boyfriend Jonny, the dodgy goings-on of Ray, and her friendship with Lionel, once a friend of the Heart family, Tracy is thrown further off course. Things are made even worse for her when The Jockey gets involved.

Like Woods' previous feature film, The Boys, which was a disturbing insight into sexual abuse, Little Fish is an account of life in suburban Sydney.

While The Boys was set in a more Anglicised neighbourhood, the Cabramatta setting for Little Fish is dominated by immigrants and refugees. Woods grew up in the area and even now he goes back there to do his shopping at "one of the great marketplaces of the world".

That marketplace was also where addicts used to go to score heroin, sometimes dying in the street.

Twelve years ago, while Woods was still at film school, he made a short film about that era of Cabramatta's history. But he says he's not into social realism for the sake of it, and he can't emphasise the heroic side of Little Fish enough.

"Even though it is an ordinary story, told in an incredibly truthful way, it is also a story concocted in a mythic fashion - as mythic as King Kong.

"I'm a little over stories, particularly at the independent film-making end, that are too honourable to the ordinary logic of life rather than stories that feel real. It's those combinations of the real and the mythic that I love in movies."