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. Continue reading “Fish Tank”