Fish Tank

reviewed by Marc Glassman

Fish Tank
Andrea Arnold, director & writer
Katie Jarvis (Mia Williams), Michael Fassbender (Connor), Kierston Wareing (Joanne Williams), Rebecca Griffiths (Tyler Williams), Harry Treadway (Billy)
Winner. The Jury Prize, Cannes, 2009

Mia Williams is a tough as nails 15 year old British girl, living in Council flats in Essex. Everybody knows she’s trouble. When Mia isn’t head butting another girl on the nose or trying to free a tethered horse that doesn’t belong to her, she’s mouthing off to her sister, Tyler or fighting with her bitchy blonde mum, Joanne.

The only thing she loves is dancing. Put on Nas and she’s in heaven, break-dancing with so much style that her mum’s new boyfriend Connor thinks she’s moving like “a black person.” Connor looks like he’s trouble, too, though Mia and 11-year old Tyler can’t tell. Their mother is happy, a good thing, but is he trying to become their new step-daddy? And what does he want from Mia? To be a dad? Or is sexy Joanne not enough?

Fish Tank is directed by the remarkable Andrea Arnold, who won an Oscar for her short drama Wasp, set in a similar locale to Fish Tank, and a Jury Prize at Cannes for her debut feature Red Room, which was dramatized in a very noir, stylized Glasgow. Now Arnold is back in the council estates, dealing with a dysfunctional gorgeous working class mother who has no hope of being able to guide her children towards a responsible adulthood.

It’s kitchen sink realism, fifty years after the early British masterpieces Look Back in Anger, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner provoked endless debates in the press, universities and even—horror of horrors!—the hoi polloi about the class system, education and whether democracy truly exists in England.

Arnold knows the terrain and is note perfect in her rendering of life on the economic and social margins in contemporary Britain. The language is vociferously slangy and filled with so many expletives that two characters saying “I hate you,” after cursing each other constitutes the film’s most sentimental scene. Life is filled with endless squabbles, lots of drinking and a fair amount of prurient sex.

It’s not a great place for a girl to grow up in, a fact that certainly has hit Mia, who is desperate to get out. Behind her astonishingly tough exterior beats the heart of a girl who loves horses, dancing and desperately wants to love someone. But she’s smart enough not to let her inner life out in a world that would tear such emotions to shreds.

Until Connor shows up and appears to be that amazing thing: a decent man. The first half of the film deals with the endless flirtation between a precocious 15 year old girl and her mother’s handsome new boyfriend. The second half deals with the consequences of a moment that had entirely different meanings to them.

Andrea Arnold’s film shared the Jury Prize at Cannes last spring with another extraordinary film, Steve McQueen’s IRA drama Hunger. She has elicited a riveting performance by non-thespian Katie Jarvis and a persuasive one from Michael Fassbender. There are very few women making dramas in the world. One of them is Andrea Arnold. Her films—and career---are worthy of attention. Given the intense and specific nature of Fish Tank, it’s hard to urge everyone to see this film. But those who want to see a tough, honest drama with great performances should look no further. Fish Tank is it.