When a small boy’s past-life memories get too powerful to ignore, his parents must help him search for the seaside family he insists he was born into. They are Taipei personalities, too busy for everything, but the boy’s fixations upend the family, which is also looking after the dad’s ailing father.

Director Lai Kuo-An is reaching for something transcendent the movie never quite reaches, and it’s too gentle to deliver much emotional wallop. Water images and sounds support the primordial feel of this Taiwanese tale, which has some of the mythic feel achieved by Japan’s Horikazu Kore-eda. And this Fish is a pleasure to watch for geometric, wide-screen compositions that favour blue, green, and coral pink.