Andrea Arnold’s tough film “Fish Tank” explores the contradictions between a teenager’s ambitions, emotions, relationships, environment, choices and consequences. Rarely has a film captured as truly the entire roller coaster that is growing up as a bitter, confused 15-year-old girl.
Mia, as played by the unprofessional actress Katie Jarvis, is the jaded and violent British girl living in slummy apartments in London, and as the entire film stems from her perspective, Jarvis is uncompromising in her energy and range as she guides herself through her own urges and uncertainties.
She begins the film in an abandoned blue apartment building. She comes to this refuge as a place to practice her secret ambitions to be a dancer, but when inside, she doesn’t forget her unbridled emotion to the rest of the world. She has no friends, constantly fights to free a horse chained in a parking lot and gets in shouting matches with her mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) and her younger sister Keeley (Sarah Bayes). All three frequent the “C” word when referring to one another.
But why does Mia act out? The movie doesn’t say and nor does Mia. As a naïve teenager on the verge of being more, how can she know? Jarvis never once telegraphs her emotions. She remains spontaneous, difficult and shocking, just like a real teenager who has gone through what Mia has. Jarvis is wonderfully convincing in the role.
She remains equally ambiguous around Connor (Michael Fassbender), her mother’s new boyfriend. Connor’s optimism and cheerful demeanor around the entire family makes him a questionable figure. We wonder how he can be so different, and how he can be so nice without any ill intentions. But then we see how he breaks Mia away from her daily monotony with a fishing trip. It’s a lovely scene in which she’s speechlessly enchanted by the new experience.
And the moment is not cheesy or overtly suspicious because Fassbender (a brilliant up-and-coming actor from “Jane Eyre” and “Inglourious Basterds”) makes his performance a masterstroke in subtlety. His intentions or demeanor never seem sinister, harsh or cloying. He’s pitch perfect in the role, and he serves a wonderful contrast to Jarvis’s ferocity.
Director Andrea Arnold’s somewhat autobiographical picture makes no attempts to hide the squalor Mia lives in, but her film is alive with color and light. It’s a constant reminder to how Mia can be influenced by her surroundings and simultaneously rebel against it. And the camera in its documentary realistic style outfitted with jump cuts and a shaky hand remind us how Mia is always pushing away, fighting and escaping from this unwanted attention.
Arnold so vividly embodies the teenage dilemma in her cinematography and screenplay. She grips us with a harsh reality in a way exactly opposite to the very similar story and themes portrayed in “An Education,” and in that way she floors us with what this teenage libido can accomplish.
4 stars