Director Andrea Arnold's follow-up to Red Road is an unflinching and absorbing tale of a teenage girl looking for escape. Emma Paterson takes a look.
In her widely acclaimed follow-up to the umbrous Red Road, Andrea Arnold brings a delicate lyricism to the social realist tradition of British film. The result is a tender, patient portrait of stunted working-class lives and the quiet efforts to escape them.
At the centre of the drama is fifteen-year-old Mia (Kate Jarvis), misanthropic, friendless and finding solace only in her love of street dance. Buoyed by the transitory freedom this offers, Mia practises her routines in an abandoned council-estate flat, and momentarily transcends the disaffection of her domestic milieu. When Mia’s mother brings home a charismatic new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender), his ambiguous enthusiasm for Mia’s dancing signals the beginning of a developing intimacy.
The absorbing, laggardly pace of Arnold’s film grants her the narrative space for rich, intimate characterisation, and in a dilatory fashion, builds to a climactic scene of revelation and near-tragedy that feels entirely plausible despite the sheer unexpectedness of its arrival. In Fish Tank, Arnold has created a film where the optimism may be hushed, but the skill is nothing short of deafening.
Winner of the Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2009.
Fish Tank, 15 year old Mia's life is turned on its head when her mum brings home a new boyfriend. Following her brilliant debut feature Red Road, director Andrea Arnold casts the same unflinching gaze on her characters and touches on the themes of her Oscar-winning short Wasp to create an original and unsettling tale for our age.
15-year-old Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis) lives with her single mother Joanne and younger sister Tyler in a run down bock of flats. Suspended from school, she fills her days searching for the next alcohol fix and hanging out in a derelict flat near her home. When her mother brings home new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender) to meet the girls, Mia soon finds herself attracted to him. Unfortunately for all concerned, the feeling seems mutual...
