US indie with skewed view

This a moving, character-based film but ultinately quite perplexing.

Dream With The Fishes is another independent American film with a skewed view of life. Terry - David Arquette - is just about to jump off the Golden Gate bridge when stranger Nick - Brad Hunt - offers him a neater out; pills, which turn out to be vitamins. The odyssey which results from the meeting between the two men is based on Terry believing he wants to die because his wife was killed in a car crash... and Nick facing certain death from leukemia in just a few weeks time; Terry agrees to go along with Nick as he plays out his final fantasies. At times the film seems like a revisitation of the Seventies as the two men space out on LSD and indulge themselves. Gradually the real basis of their relationship becomes a balance between the absurd and the tragic, and you`re in there with them. David Arquette`s nerdy, twitchy performance is a trifle distracting at first but then you get used to him; Brad Hunt plays the loose cannon that is Nick with a clever edge. Kathryn Erbe is Nick`s tattooing girlfriend and Cathy Moriarty - looking terribly healthy - plays his aunt, a former stripper. J.E.Freeman adds depth to the saga as Nick`s father. The film is the work of writer/director Finn Taylor, his first as director and he`s let the movie focus on what it`s all about - his characters. Ultimately, Dream With The Fishes is quite a moving but perplexing film.