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Directed by Andrea Arnold
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Fish Tank Ordinarily
I take the titles of films literally – “The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance,” for example, or “The Godfather,” obviously. But when a title is a metaphor for the
life of the people in the film, as it is in “Fish Tank,” a new
English film written and directed by Andrea Arnold, it adds a dimension to
what it is we see when we see the film.
Katie Jarvis plays Mia, a 15-year-old who lives in a Council apartment
block somewhere outside London.
She is consumed by the chaos in her life, most of it created by her
single mother Joanne, who barely looks old enough to have had Katie. She’s a party girl who likes to
party at her own apartment. Mia
finds that the only way she can communicate, with Joanne or anyone else for
that matter, is to yell and curse at them. She drinks whatever she can get,
she’s been kicked out of school, she’s insulted by some other
girls practicing hip-hop moves on a playground, she can’t allow herself
to open up to anyone, she sees a horse tethered to a chain outside some
nearby trailers and can’t release it before the boys who own it grab
her and tease her. What she likes
to do is practice hip-hop moves by herself in an
empty apartment. What
will become of her, as she swims round and round that metaphorical fish
tank? One night her mother brings
home a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender),
who seems more relaxed, more mature than the others. He takes the family on an outing to a
lake, where he catches a fish with his hands. He tucks Mia into bed at night, slowly
becoming an object of her affection and desire. But he and we know he is not what he
seems, and the balance of the film is what happens when Mia finds out. The
film won awards as the best British film of 2009, along with a best writer
and director for Arnold. Just
released theatrically in the United States, it’s also running as an
On-Demand film on your cable company’s listing. The story is that Arnold found the
18-year-old Katie Jarvis on the station platform at Tilbury,
having an argument with her boyfriend.
She also had had a child at 16.
She is a natural, and plays without a moment of self-consciousness
through this difficult and bruising film. |