Fish Tank (2009) [Blu-ray]
Drama

The Criterion Collection

British director Andrea Arnold (Red Road) won the Cannes Jury Prize for the searing and invigorating Fish Tank, about a fifteen-year-old girl, Mia (electrifying newcomer Katie Jarvis), who lives with her mother and sister in the depressed housing projects of Essex. Mia's adolescent conflicts and emerging sexuality reach boiling points when her mother's new boyfriend (a lethally attractive Michael Fassbender (Hunger, Inglourious Basterds) enters the picture. In her young career, Arnold has already proven herself to be a master of social realism (evoking the work of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach), investing her sympathetic portraits of dead-end lives with a poetic, earthy sensibility all her own. Fish Tank heralds the official arrival of a major new filmmaker.

User Comment: Chris_Docker from Scotland, United Kingdom, 29 June 2009 • "All my films have started with an image," says director Andrea Arnold. "It's usually quite a strong image and it seems to come from nowhere. I don't understand the image at first or what it means, but I want to know more about it so I start exploring it, try and understand it and what it means. This is how I always start writing." What does the image of a fish tank conjure up for you? On the inside longing to look out, is fifteen-year-old Mia. Trapped in a housing estate. Trapped in a single parent family. Trapped by people around her she can't respect. Trapped in herself. For being fifteen. She has her own inner world, fighting to manifest itself . Fortified by cigarettes and alcohol she can kick in the door of the empty nearby flat. A bare floor. Her CD player. Practice her moves. A better dancer than those kids on the block she just nutted.

Mia is quite content to carve out her own double life, f*ck you very much! Never mind she gets caught and nearly comes to grief trying to steal a horse. And social workers don't scare her. But mom's new boyfriend – that could be a pain! A real spanner in the works. Especially when he's so annoyingly nice.

Under Andrea Arnold's hand, life on this inner city concrete backwater is suddenly very alive. Banalities become beautiful. Like sunlight through cracked glass. Vibrant, gritty and riveting, but in a way that entertains powerfully. As pulsating and funny as Trainspotting but without the yuck factor. Its momentum is overpowering. We never know what is going to come out of Mia's mouth or where events will lead. Each jaw-dropping new scene surprises yet seems the result of inexorable momentum. As if that wasn't enough, the story mercifully avoids kitchen-sink drama, excessive violence, drugs, getting pregnant, grand larceny, car crashes and all the other cliché-ridden devices to which cinema-goers are usually subjected. Tightly controlled, Fish Tank attacks with a potent and thought-provoking arsenal of story-telling.

Andrea Arnold proved she could do hard-hitting realism with her award-winning debut, Red Road. Here she excels her earlier efforts but still imbibes many of the verité approaches and senses of discipline that have filtered down from the Dogme and Advance Party movements. Her 'strong initial image,' or lack of subservience to more traditional methodology, maybe reminds of the devotion to experimental, avant-garde cinema taken by artists-turned-filmmakers such as Steve McQueen (Hunger) or theme-over-story technicians such as Duane Hopkins (Better Things). Michael Fassbender, who took reality to new heights as Bobby Sands in Hunger, here plays the mystifying and warmly charismatic Connor (Mum's boyfriend).

Arnold didn't allow actors to read the script beforehand. They were given their scenes only a few days before filming. For the part of Mia, she chooses a complete unknown with zero experience. Arnold spotted Katie Jarvis at a train station after drawing a blank with casting agencies. "She was on one platform arguing with her boyfriend on another platform, giving him grief." However the performance is achieved, Jarvis is electrifying. If Arnold wanted a 'real' person for the role, this seventeen-year-old takes over the screen with raw adolescent power. Says Arnold, "I wanted a girl who would not have to act, could just be herself." Fish Tank will lift you out of your seat and on an unstoppable flight, ricocheting against confines of circumstance and imploding a dysfunctional family with its head of hormonal steam. Laugh, cry, hold on tight. You will need to. I could almost taste the vodka, as Mia goes through her Mum's dressing table drawers, bottle in hand. I wish all British films were this good.

Summary: Right out of the water.

User Comment: Stampsfightclub from United Kingdom, 27 September 2009 • Friendless and unloved Mia (Jarvis) dreams of becoming a dancer and when her mum's new boyfriend arrives on the scene, everything changes for the teenager.

Fish tank is an exceptional artistic creation, based on the purity of Andrea Arnold's script and appreciative direction whilst a debuting Katie Jarvis excels as the troubled isolated teenager, and what a feature this is.

British cinema is some of the most dramatic and flinching cinema in the world. From Trainspotting to This is England there are always issues of realism and points to convey and with this 2009 appraised release we see more hard drama.

The opening sequence follows Mia around the streets, slurring and shouting abuse at anyone in her radar and the coarse dialogue and minimal amount of sympathy is staggering. As if you had been slapped, this will instantly startle you into realizing the type of environment and lifestyle Mia is living in. The language will give Pulp Fiction a run for its money.

Added as an attempt to justify the rural scene of Britain, Arnold gets it spot on as everything flows with little adjustment required. Everything is as it should be because everything has been so carefully planned, in particular the character development which will have many shedding a tear or two.

Katie Jarvis' cold and unappreciative style is spot on for the protagonist and as the film goes through hard fights with families and spending time isolated in a deserted flat, we see the emotional desire of Mia. The ambition of becoming a dancer is exceptionally well produced, owing to the fact that the background is effectively established. The hard family life Mia is living inspires her to find a way out and her dancing is her motive to break free. This really does work up a treat with twists turns, ups and downs and a staggering climax that adds extra spice to the picture.

At only 15 the central character certainly has a controversial agenda set for her. From sleeping with random strangers to drinking anything dangerous, Mia seems unfazed. Seeing her younger sister drinking beer with her mother in the next room will have mouths dropping.

Thanks to this straight forward no messing attitude the plot can move forward and tell the audience of what real life entails and the cultural state we are living in at the moment.

Some British films go out of their way to preach, such as This is England and Brassed off and whilst that isn't a bad quality, the enriching style of this film makes it flow and add extra drama continuously.

The scene setting shots are exquisite, as if made from a Skins episode without the teen angst. The scene in the car is excellent and not to forget this film boasts an exceptional soundtrack that fits the mood as well as 2007's Hallam Foe.

Summary: Staggering picture.

[CSW] -3- This is storytelling at its best because it takes a continuous running series of photographs of life in a low-rent high-rise single-parent housing tenement without blinking or adding the type of drama normally associated with that life. This is a coming-of-age story that avoids all of the usual clichés but still manages to show us a very real very believable look at life through the eyes of a young seemingly hostile girl. This movie defies the normal definition of a coming-of-age or even a double-life movie. You will just have to see it to understand how powerful it is.
[V5.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.

º º