Peccadillo Pictures
If you’re looking for a slight alternative to the late summer offerings (particularly if a certain sewer-dwelling clown isn’t your cup of tea), then you’d do well to check out The Shiny Shrimps. A hit back in its native France, this is a charming sports movie that seeks to tug at your heartstrings, tickle your ribs, and generally just make you feel a lot better about the world come to the end of the experience.
The film follows championship swimmer, Matthias (Nicolas Gob), whose image is in crisis following making a homophobic comment during an interview on live TV. As punishment, Matthias is tasked with coaching a gay water polo team who are working towards competing in the Gay Games in Croatia. That team is The Shiny Shrimps, and while there’s plenty of enthusiasm in the group, there isn’t a great deal of finesse to their game. Can Matthias change the team’s fortune, as well as his own personal biases?
Inspired by the real-life Shiny Shrimps, this is a story that aims to promote inclusivity and emotional openness across individuals from a variety of different backgrounds. The colourful cast of characters that make up the ranks of the Shiny Shrimps gives the film an infectious sense of joy. The film doesn’t shy away from some of the darker elements in these guys’ lives, and particularly the homophobic abuse that is sadly part of the fabric of their existence. But that isn’t the focus of the film. Instead, it is more on demonstrating the camaraderie that being in a sports team together can establish, a ride or die attitude where everyone involved clearly value the relationships amongst the group.
It makes Matthias’s entrance into their dynamic all the more interesting. He’s not homophobic, despite his choice of words on live television, but neither is he a particularly open individual. He’s a bit of a prude, easily embarrassed, and a little self-centred. So, of course, the film becomes as much about the team opening up a more exuberant side of Matthias’s personality, as it is about him improving the team’s game and their chances at the Gay Games.
It is in the group dynamics that the film excels, with the cast all on great form. Many of the bonds between characters here feel like they run deep, creating a sense of a long shared history which more than helps the drama feel all the more realistic, even as it threatens to become more contrived in the final third. It also helps that both the script and the cast are incredibly funny, with many gags coming thick and fast across the sports movie/road trip narrative.
The film won’t win any awards for film-making sophistication. It’s fairly unremarkable when it comes to producing anything all that dynamic as a sports movie. In all fairness to it, water polo isn’t the most dynamic of sports to shoot on film, although Govare and Le Gallo do well to construct a sense of rhythm, particularly as the team becomes more and more harmonised. But the film’s strength is not in its camerawork or cinematography, but rather in its ‘heart on its inflatable armband’ approach to its group dynamics.
There is something so infectiously joyous about this film and its story of inclusivity that it’s so easy to look over its shortcomings. It may be a little emotionally manipulative as it heads into its final length, but this is the sort of film that makes you feel closer to the group of strangers in the room that has just experienced the film with. That is a special kind of feeling, a feeling that is warm, hopeful and exceptionally charming. A wonderful antidote to the cynicism and intolerance that has come to cloud our headlines, so take the dive and enjoy the fabulous company of The Shiny Shrimps.
The Shiny Shrimps is released in cinemas on 6th September.
