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Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 7 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Wed Jan 20, 2010 11:12 pm

http://www.moviefilmreview.com/fish-tank-2009.php

Fish Tank (2009)
Reviewer's Rating: This entry has a rating of 4
Rate This Movie: (Time Waster!)(It Sucks)(So... So...)(Watch This!)(Get the DVD!)
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Posted on 12 January 2010 by MaxEvans


Fish Tank

By Max Evans

Director Andrea Arnold

The wreckage of “broken Britain” can be seen in Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, which featured in last weekend’s line up at the Cornwall Film Festival.

Following up the director’s debut feature Red Road, the film has received all sorts of accolades including winning a coveted Jury Prize at the Cannes Film festival. It’s easy to see why.

The plot centres around Mia, a unremittingly boisterous but brittle teenager growing up on an sink estate in Essex, who insulates herself in the hopes of one day becoming a hip-hop dancer.

This is no gentle portrait. Nor is it simple: Mia is no Vicky Pollard, no caricature. In the opening sequence we see her headbutt a rival girl as the ugly, doused landscape gapes between the tower blocks, but quickly we are drawn into the slip-stream of this young woman as she ghosts the vacant council flats with her self-choreographed, cider fuelled routines, and her plots to free a withered horse from a gypsy encampment.

Mia, played to a perfect pitch by debutant Katie Jarvis, is at the margins of her own household where the stink of spilt booze emanates from every room. When her disinterested mother comes home with a handsome stranger called Connor (Michael Fassbender) Mia becomes stifled between her urges toward him as a father figure and the nascent nascent sexual desire he inspires in her.

In this sense Fish Tank takes on the classic structure of a rights-of-passage story but the motif of growing-up reaches beyond the central character, colouring a world that has failed to deliver on its parental responsibilities for every one. In Arnold’s film adults play at being children, as much as children play at being adults.

Mia’s younger sister smokes, drinks and spits worn expletives as though she were already weary of this world at the age of ten, whilst her mother strops around the flat, ordering the daughters out so that she can play in the living room with her friends.

Connor, who is played delicately by the fast growing phenomenon that is Michael Fassbender, confirms this idea more than any other character. He is charming and he engages with Mia with a breathy humility that she has never experienced in a man, and yet his immaturity won’t allow him to realise his desired identity as the adult in their relationship – the father.

As Mia and Connor inevitably give way in a strikingly presented sexual encounter we are left wondering who is to blame for this mess? The scenes between the two characters up to this point have been so sensual that we, as viewers, can hardly resist the attraction more than they can.

When later on in the film it becomes clear Connor has been concealing a double life, a life decidedly more middle class than Mia’s, we are left wondering if he is the villain of the piece. Yet the direction and the acting simply won’t allow for such easy distinctions.

The narrative rattles on into an uneasy pace as events seem to spin out of control. Mia behaviour takes her into dangerous territory. Frightening consequences loom. One character warns her, as if she were voicing the thoughts of the audience, “You’re starting to scare me know. ”

The visuals are stippled and scarred by clever cinematography, although it must be admitted that the film’s symbolism (including a balloon amidst the tenements) becomes a little tired in places. The plot too is a little slow in unfurling its quite foreseeable arc and yet there is a pleasure in having the physical tension eked out.

The people in Andrea Arnold’s locale - a wasteland of empty concrete underpasses and dual carriage ways - have been left to dissipate in tower blocks like decaying teeth, and yet they are people. They are redeemed by hope, however bootless it may appear.

It is obvious to draw parallels with the work of Ken Loach, or to a lesser extent Mike Leigh. The film is couched in the syntax of its forbears, but it is the dismal and puny hope that gives Fish Tank its own tragic identity.

There are no easy answers; no easy outcomes, but there is possibility. It is what allows Andrea Arnold’s characters to beam their humanity across all that beaten space, over those fences and motorway partitions that have kept them disconnected.

Andrea Arnold, originally a native of Dartford, was a guest of the Conrwall Film festival several years ago. Before the screening Lucy Freers, member of the festival steering group, paid tribute to this “inspiring young woman” and said that she had it on good authority that some of Fish Tank was based on the director’s personal experiences.

Britain was once the undisputed champion of social realist cinema and its lovely to see such an accomplished film showcasing the talent still to be found in this country. The Cornwall Film Festival has been passionate about promoting British Film makers and the organisers should be congratulated for bringing such a well realised English picture to an audience that would not otherwise get to see it on the big screen.
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Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 7 Empty Fish Tank (2009) – The Ambiguities of Age

Post by Admin Wed Jan 20, 2010 11:20 pm

http://ruthlessculture.com/2010/01/09/fish-tank-2009-the-ambiguities-of-age/

January 9, 2010...4:46 pm

Art is a conceit and cinema doubly so. For all the demands for greater realism and protestations that one is producing cinema verite, the director can never hope to capture reality itself on film. If a director is holding up a mirror to the real world with the help of actors, camera crews and sound technicians then the distortions are so great that, in a sense, the director might as well be making a super hero film for all the truth that he has managed to capture on film. The very artificiality of artistic endeavour means that it is forever on an ontologically slippery slope. Indeed, consider the evolution of forms of story-telling such as the three act structure or the buildungsroman. These evolved in order to communicate certain kinds of truths but all too often the demands of the form come to dominate to desire to communicate truth. Real life seldom fits into a three act structure. What started off as abstraction from reality quickly becomes obfuscation of it as the cinema begins to create its own fictional worlds. Simplified parodies of the real world. Childish facsimiles in which the good guys always win and the cute couple always wind up together. These forms can then solidify into genres, traditions of stories that follow the same rules or which evolve with the rules in mind. The original truths behind the rules and the forms long since ignored and abandoned.

Because of this tendency to confuse the cause with the effect, discerning audiences have come to value ambiguity in their stories. Ambiguity that fills a space normally reserved for boldly fraudulent declarations of how the world works. Ferocious defences of the natural order of purely literary universes. This deliberate ambiguity is seen as a sign of intelligence as it is a reminder that there is a universe outside of the artistic, the traditional and the conceptual. A universe more complex and more intriguing than could ever be captured by a single piece of art.

Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank is a film that has internalised this understanding of the nature of art. Ostensibly a formulaic coming-of-age/loss-of-innocence story, its strength comes from a willingness to explore not only the ambiguities within the characters, but also within our perceptions of those characters.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a teenager living on a council estate. When we first encounter her, she has just had a falling out with a friend of hers (“you know what I’m like”) and now finds herself completely alone. Isolated from her peers and her family, Mia spends her time practising dance routines in an abandoned flat on the estate. She dreams of being a dancer but will not dance in public. She even attacks some girls who do practice their dance routines in front of others. This isolation is suddenly shattered when Mia is found dancing in the kitchen by her mother’s new lover Connor (Michael Fassbender). Connor’s effect upon the three females of the household is immediate. He first appears stripped to the waist and rippling with muscles. He praises Mia’s dancing and chats with her amiably. The teenager feels uncomfortable and predictably lashes out at him, and yet she is intrigued enough to want to spend time with this new person when the family go out for a drive together. As the days pass, Mia and Connor’s relationship improves. He encourages her to dance, lending her his video camera so that she might apply for a job as a dancer and he even gives her money so that she can go off and get drunk with one of the local lads she flirts with. As a result of this warmth and affection, Mia and Connor wind up having sex. This causes Connor to leave Mia’s mother and return home. A home he shares with a wife and child. Upon discovering the existence of this family, Mia abducts Connor’s daughter but then returns her to her family. An act that earns her nothing more than the back of Connor’s hand across her face.

Mia is a deeply ambiguous character. Her behaviour is mostly that of an adult : She drinks, she swears, she stays out all night. In fact, initially, it is quite difficult to work out how old she is supposed to be. It is not until reference is made to Mia’s schooling that we can start to guess that she might be under sixteen and it is only once Mia and Connor have sex that we know for certain that she is fifteen years old. This ambiguity is exacerbated by the way in which the film handles the other women in Mia’s household. Indeed, Mia’s little sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) is even more foul-mouthed than Mia and she is also seen smoking and swigging from a can of cider. Even more de-stabilising is the fact that Mia and Tyler’s mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) is presented as being just as childish as her daughters. She seems to think of little aside from getting drunk and dancing with her friends. The relationship between the three females is also intensely immature, like emotionally incontinent children, they scream at each other, call each other names and ignore each other out of spite, anger or genuine grievance. Nobody wants to be hurt and so you get your digs in first. Attack attack attack. In Mia’s family, nobody assumes the role of the mother and so neither of the girls assume the role of a child. In effect, all three characters seem to be at the same level of emotional and intellectual maturity.

The ambiguity present in Mia filters through into the relationship she has with Connor. Here, Andrea Arnold brilliantly muddies the ethical waters by establishing a relationship with an exquisitely precarious balance of power. Initially at least, we are encouraged by three separate factors to see the relationship in a positive light :

Firstly, Connor behaves like a perfect gentleman. He is warm and affectionate with Mia but he never flirts with her or takes advantage of her when she is in a position of weakness (such as being passed out drunk). His actions are, if anything, paternal.

Secondly, while Connor’s behaviour is not sexualised, Mia’s is. She spies on Connor while he is f#%@#&! her mother and then watches footage of him getting dressed with a hand laid across her groin. She also goes out of her way to press up against Connor and parades her not-quite boyfriend in front of him almost as a challenge. A challenge Connor picks up on during sex, asking Mia if his cock is bigger than her boyfriend’s.

Thirdly, Mia’s adult behaviour patterns and the lack of a ‘more grown-up’ character in her circle means that we are encouraged to see Mia as dysfunctional but grown up and capable of having the degree of sexual agency she has in her dealings with Connor.

These three factors combine to create an impression that Mia’s attraction to Connor is not only natural but a positive thing too. When Mia films Connor as he is getting dressed, we see it as a playful expression of risk-free adolescent sexuality. Because Connor is passive, we think that Mia is safe and, even if Connor were to return Mia’s feelings, it is clear that Mia is grown up enough to possess sexual agency and make these kinds of decisions for herself : She wanted it. Not Connor.

Mia and Connor

However, the second a drunk Connor asks Mia to dance for him, a second interpretation of the relationship presents itself. Suddenly, Connor becomes an exploitative predator. A man who used his paternal position to seduce a fifteen year old girl. In the wake of this realisation, all of Connor’s actions must be seen in a different light. Did he intentionally give her money to get drunk in the hope of lowering her defences? Did he get Mia’s mother drunk in order to get her out of the way? When he encouraged her to dance, was he encouraging her to express herself or was he wanting her to shake her arse at him?

Mia Dancing

The relationship is ambiguous as the question of Mia’s sexual agency is itself ambiguous. This ambiguity lies at the very heart of the film and Andrea Arnold does a wonderful job of making sure that the audience never gain enough of a foot-hold to reach the basis for clear moral judgements. In addition to being written as being in a state of arrested emotional development, the film’s female characters are forever being cast and recast with the trappings of both adulthood and childhood. For example, after carrying Mia to bed, Connor also carried Tyler to bed. This seems to suggest that his desire to hold Mia was purely pragmatic and parental, not sensual. Similarly, after Connor has seduced Mia, we are shown footage of Connor’s daughter singing. When Connor encourages his daughter, he does so in the same way as he encouraged Mia to dance, calling into question whether his encouragement of Mia actually did have a secret agenda after all. However, the most powerful act of recasting comes towards the end of the film when Mia abducts Connor’s daughter.

Unsure as to what to do with the girl she has kidnapped, Mia marches across some fields. When the little girl will not walk, Mia begins to scream at her in the style of a council estate mum. This gives us an image of Mia’s future, transforming her from vengeful child to single mother. Her mother. However, when Connor catches up with Mia he simply cuffs her like a misbehaving child. Again, Mia is reduced to the status of an adolescent.

Fish Tank is a extraordinary film because, despite being a coming-of-age drama, it is actually all about the lack of clear dividing lines between adulthood and childhood. Growing up is not a question of black and white but rather of endless shades of grey. Perhaps there is no black or white. Perhaps all distinctions between the different stages of life are arbitrary simplifications of a world that is too complex for simple moral and psychological judgements? Arnold beautifully captures this ambiguity in one of the film’s final scenes as the three females dance together, perfectly in step, to the same piece of music. Clearly, if maturity is something that is evident in a person’s actions then they are all equally mature and immature.
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Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 7 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Thu Jan 21, 2010 3:22 am

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=azkUbMlFyzTE

‘Fish Tank’

Katie Jarvis, who plays an alienated British teenager in “Fish Tank,” is an acting novice discovered by a casting agent while arguing with her boyfriend at a train station. A high- school dropout who slept on her sister’s couch during most of the shooting, she skipped the film’s Cannes premiere to stay home with her newborn baby.

Jarvis translates her real-life hardships into a raw, scintillating performance in Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age story about Mia, a 15-year-old trapped in a dreary housing project with her party-girl mother (Kierston Wareing) and younger sister. It’s one of the best film debuts in recent memory.

Mia is confused and angry, but loves animals and hip-hop dancing. She’s a walking contradiction, a girl who can shatter a rival’s nose with a head butt one minute and try to free an old shackled horse the next.

When her mother’s hunky new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender, beefed up since playing the emaciated Bobby Sands in “Hunger”) treats her kindly and supports her dream of becoming a dancer, Mia gains confidence. But the relationship takes a sordid turn and Mia discovers that Connor is hiding a shocking secret.

Like Arnold’s debut feature, “Red Road,” “Fish Tank” is gritty, realistic and riveting. Watching her movies is more like eavesdropping than entertainment.

“Fish Tank,” from IFC Films, is playing in New York. It opens Jan. 29 in Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Rating: ***1/2
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Post by Admin Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:57 pm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016972582524454.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

'Fish Tank': Brit Grit, Anger and Power
Ordinary medical-drama clichés afflict 'Extraordinary Measures'

*
By JOE MORGENSTERN

People tell us who they are by how they behave. Ten minutes or so into Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank," we don't yet know what the young English heroine is up to, or even her name—this remarkable film dispenses plot information like a slow-release tablet dispenses active ingredients—but we already know lots about her. She's seething with anger, likes to dance, has too much time on her hands, is fearless or foolish or both, and gives away her loneliness by taking in the gritty world around her with a yearning, devouring gaze.

Watch a scene from "Fish Tank." The film, directed by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, follows an alienated 15-year old girl as she forms a relationship with her mother's boyfriend. Video courtesy of IFC.

In fact, her name is Mia, she's 15 years old and she's played phenomenally well—indeed, almost unaccountably well—by Katie Jarvis, who'd never acted before, or, for that matter, done any dancing. (She was discovered at a train station in Essex, arguing with her boyfriend.) "Fish Tank" is a coming-of-age story for Mia, who will at least have a shot at happiness, and a coming-into-mastery story for the writer-director, Ms. Arnold, whose prospects seem limitless.

For those familiar with British film history, gritty may instantly equate with working class and realistic. In this case it does and it doesn't. Does because Mia's surroundings fill the bill—a cheerless housing project that she, her prickly mother and kid sister call home; a landscape mostly, though not entirely, distinguished by blank horizons and vestiges of vanished industries. Doesn't because Ms. Arnold relieves the grittiness with interludes of intense pleasure (during one of them, Mia watches her mother's handsome boyfriend catch a fish with his bare hands), and transcends realist conventions with tough-minded poetry. (The spirit of Fellini seems to hover over an exquisite, ritualized dance toward the end.)

Be forewarned that the accents are occasionally thick enough to make you wish for subtitles, but rest assured that you'll never have any doubt about what's going on. The intensity of Mia's gaze goes off the charts when her mother's boyfriend, Connor, first shows up in their tacky flat. He's played by Michael Fassbender, who sustains an impressive star presence while staying within the bounds of Connor's amiable, seemingly gentle character. Here again, the film is in no hurry to reveal his character in full, so the question that sustains the dramatic tension is whether Connor will stay within the bounds of propriety as he becomes an increasingly intimate part of a family with an alluring Lolita in its midst. What's immediately clear is that he has the heat to thaw Mia's chilly demeanor, though her innate hostility reasserts itself whenever she feels threatened by the loss of his attention.

As heroines go, Mia is a hard case, and Ms. Arnold declines to make her a softer one. We come to like her only by fits and starts, come to see her vulnerability very slowly. The one time the story flirts with sentimentality is when Mia is smitten by the spectacle of a white horse chained to a cement block in a junk-strewn lot. Even then, her concern is so obsessive that she takes scary chances to set the poor nag free.

Despite her hooded personality, she's capable of stunning surprises. It's been a good while since I've seen a movie whose most powerful sequence was both unforeseen and entirely unpredictable as it played out. Or, for that matter, a movie whose climax ran so counter to carefully nourished expectations. I'd already imagined the outcome by the time Mia went off to confront her fate, but the filmmaker had a much better idea. (She also had a fine cast that includes Kierston Wareing as Mia's mother, and strong support from the cinematographer, Robbie Ryan, who has a great eye for industrial landscapes, the production designer, Helen Scott, and the editor, Nicolas Chaudeurge.)

My first encounter with Ms. Arnold and her work was more than five years ago at the Telluride Film Festival, where she showed "Wasp," a harrowing 26-minute featurette about a young woman strung out between kids she can barely care for and affection she can't find. Everyone who saw it at Telluride knew the director would go on to bigger things, though perhaps not as quickly as she did; "Wasp" won an Oscar as the best live action short of 2004. Her first feature, "Red Road," was a 2006 thriller set in Glasgow; it was conceived as part of an experimental project inspired by the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. No such artistic debts were involved in the making of "Fish Tank." It's her creation from the very first commanding shot—Mia facing the camera—and it's a fine one.

(The film has already opened in New York. Next Friday it will open in Los Angeles, then play theaters in other major cities. In addition, it will be available, starting January 27th, via video on demand. You can find out if it's being carried by your cable provider by checking the IFC Films Web site at ifcfilms.com.)
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Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 7 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Thu Jan 21, 2010 9:02 pm

http://www.ifc.com/news/2010/01/fish-tank.php

Not Another Teen Movie
By Kim Morgan on 01/21/2010
Katie Jarvis in "Fish Tank," IFC Films, 2010

It's tough being a teenage girl. Especially when enduring and hopefully, when you can, enjoying, that breakthrough age of 15. A lot happens when you're 15. Though some girls float through adolescence with a winsome (or conceited) confidence -- soaking in and gaining assurance from their protected status as daddy's little princesses; or benefiting from strong, supportive mothers, those not blessed with such luxuries -- and having two parents like that is a luxury; it shouldn't be, but it is -- find themselves stomping and scraping and screaming through youth with a special kind of Napoleon complex that only female teens and Joe Pesci possess.

Teenage girls, from intelligent young lasses rolling their eyes through AP English to those rampaging their way through baby burlesque episodes of Maury Povich, are constantly enduring life's "Get your shine-box" indignities -- even if they can't properly articulate what those indignities are. They just know they don't like them. As in, they don't like how you're eye-balling them. They don't like your passive-aggressive insulting missives. They don't like your aggressive-aggressive insulting missives. And they especially don't like your f#%@#&! tone. "You don't know me! You don't know me!" they proclaim, pugnaciously echoing the query: "Am I here to amuse you?"

Such is the case with 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) in Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank" (her second picture after the impressive "Red Road") -- a rough, yet sensitive kitchen sink drama that finds our young heroine stuck in the British projects, clomping through its ugliness with a touching mixture of righteous indignation and moist-eyed vulnerability.

She's 15, so playing tough girl is still a form of playing. She and her little sister exchange pleasantries like "fuck face" and "cunt bucket" (which actually made me laugh out loud from its easy honesty -- a pre-teen girl casually declaring her sister the c-word, my goodness), and yet she's not playing: Mia's surroundings are making her grow up, harder and faster and with an enormous chip on her shoulder. She has little power in the world save for her youth and vigor and spunk and, as is often the case with teenage girls, her blossoming sexuality -- a beautiful thing and yet something that will cause confusion and pain. When a group of guys roughhouse Mia, grabbing and holding her with the intent of possible violation, she kicks and screams and valiantly runs away. It's a wonderful scene watching Mia refuse to be victimized, but then the shot of her fleeing so quickly and breathing so hard reveals her fear -- and that's both sad and supremely touching. She's still a kid. And again, it's damn hard for a teenage girl.

A lone wolf, Mia is clearly intelligent, but probably doesn't know just how smart she is. When watching a small group of scantily clad teen girls engaging in an overtly sexual dance routine, she looks at their attempts to emulate the Beyoncé, Britney, Christina, Pussycat Doll ideal with bemused disgust. To Mia, this isn't dancing and she informs the belly-pierced clan flat-out: they suck. It's a telling moment that Mia, who loves to dance, would not only hold some standards regarding their rehearsal, but be both threatened and repulsed by the girl's sexual movements. This kind of overt sexuality is going to serve an important, thrilling, but frequently annoying role in her life, and especially with her dreams of dancing (as a later scene in a strip club will show). You get the sense that this is all washing over her as she observes the girls, and so after they charge back at her with that patent and tired insult between girls (she's ugly), Mia pulls out the Pesci and head-butts one of them.

In another movie, this moment might inspire an "Oh, hell yes!" with the audience. But Arnold isn't that simplistic. It's a funny and scary moment, but also a little tragic -- especially when we see where some of this aggression and abuse has come from -- her terrible mother.

That's blonde sexpot and perpetual loser Joanne (Kierston Wareing), a young mother who drinks too much, screams at her little girls too much, and leaves them to their own devices. They imbibe, they smoke, they swear - she seems oblivious to it all. Home is one long bitchfest, with mom and little sis, Tyler (an impressive Rebecca Griffiths), so Mia finds escape in a lonely apartment building, drinking and hip hop dancing to rap music.

The household dynamic changes significantly when Mom gets a new boyfriend. That's the handsome, charming Connor (an extraordinary Michael Fassbender), who cares more about the girls than Mom does. He takes them fishing, he carries them to bed, and he encourages Mia's dancing, even introducing her to the sounds of James Brown and most especially Bobby Womack's gorgeously heart-rending version of "California Dreamin'" (he has good taste), and letting her borrow a video camera to record one of her routines. He also finds himself attracted to her, but you're not certain at first. Mia is clearly smitten with Connor, and as she watches him make love to her mother through a half-open door, she's curious and probably jealous. This guy may be the only positive paternal influence she's had, but it's mixed up in heated sexual desire. She wants him. And, in a shocking, but bravely erotic scene, he wants her -- and they do something about it.

Truly, their seduction moves from erotic to downright hot, nearing the precipice of exploitation. Mia's under 16 (the age of legal consent in England) and Connor's closing in on 30 -- or older. We should be outraged. We're not. This isn't to say the moment plays like Pia Zadora in "Butterfly" (not that I'm slamming "Butterfly"), but Arnold is so honest with her story and characters, and the actors so adept at revealing subtle, conflicted nuances, that it unfolds like it had to happen. It would be more insulting to Mia had Arnold made her spitfire little heroine the cardboard cutout victim -- sagging in the aftermath of statutory rape. Instead, she allows this girl to have a serious crush, to feel lust, to yearn for one bright spot in her otherwise dreary life.

What Connor does is wrong, and he knows it. So much so that he (spoiler alert) will leave their family the very next morning. You actually feel badly for Mia when he leaves and she chases after her car before stopping yourself and thinking, wait, what he did was so wrong. Why am I feeling like Mia?

That's how powerful and persuasive Arnold is as a director. And Jarvis, a non-actress who was discovered on a subway platform arguing with her boyfriend (which is something like the Ken Loach version of Lana Turner's discovery at the soda fountain), is a revelation, bringing perhaps her own personal anger and poignancy to Mia, never settling on a one-note characterization of angry tough chick or hapless victim or spunky sexy girl. She's none of these things and then, all of these things, and more -- she's a real, live teenage girl -- full-out outward fury and bursts of happiness, particularly when dancing, and of course, curious with her sexuality.

And yet, as loud as she can holler at it, inside, she's circumspect about her real feelings and especially her place in the world. Walking so aggressively through her shabby, garbage-strewn environment, moving past ugly, depressing architecture and into dank, cheerless rooms where little girls smoke cigarettes and watch bad television on tiny cheap TV's, she's so intent on moving --- moving away from all of this -- and with Arnold's camera continually following her, we are right there with her.

Even more impressive, we are also, in certain instances, right there with all of the characters. In a scene near the end of the movie, we watch Mia, little sister Tyler and Mom dance to "Life's a Bitch" (the lyrics continue with "and then you die, that's why we get high, cause you never know when you're gonna go") in an empty room, a rare moment when all the girls connect. Starting out with lifeless movements, with Mia and Tyler following their mother's joyless attempt at cheerfulness, their dance builds into a moment of near ebullience. If this were a Hollywood movie, if Goldie Hawn were their mother, they'd be singing in their hairbrushes, smiling and laughing and whipping their hair around to "Respect." Here, they are actually trying to come up with a routine, and there's something really sweet and yet, incredibly sad about that.

Like they're trying to create some kind of order in the midst of trying to escape. I said earlier that it's tough for a teenage girl -- but in this moment you see how tough it is for all of these girls/women -- these generations of teenage girls, past, present and future. For a second, you actually wish they were dancing with a little more wild abandon, whipping their hair around and laughing hysterically -- having some f#%@#&! fun. And not for our benefit, but for theirs. After all, they're not here to amuse you.

Kim Morgan is our guest critic for the month of January.
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Post by Admin Thu Jan 21, 2010 9:08 pm

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured/posts/quickfix-fish-tank-is-one-uncomfortable-ride

A short review of the new limited release 'Fish Tank' starring Michael Fassbender
Posted on Thursday, Jan 21, 2010 By Drew McWeeny

QuickFix: 'Fish Tank' is one uncomfortable ride

Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender in the slow-burn 'Fish Tank,' now playing in limited release.
Credit: IFC Films

Andrea Arnold's filmography so far is not a particularly long one, but it seems that even in the span of a short and a couple of features, it's a significant one. Cut from the same cloth as fellow English miserablist Ken Loach, she seems fascinated by the grey areas inherent to a certain sort of UK upbringing. With "Fish Tank," she's made her best film so far, and in the process, reinforced just how glad I am I didn't have any daughters.

Don't get me wrong... I have friends with daughters, and I know how much they love them and what a particular type of joy that relationship brings them, and I'm sure they wouldn't trade it for the world. But I know myself and I know how I handle stress, and as girls get older, the anxiety would probably kill me. As a friend once said, "With a son, you only have one penis to worry about. With a daughter, you worry about ALL OF THEM."

Katie Jarvi makes her film debut here as 15-year-old Mia, angry and aimless, a creature of pure impulse, and as the film starts, she's already on a collision course with self-made disaster. She's angry all the time at her mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) for reasons to drift from bad idea to bad idea. Then a new form of chaos enters her life when her mother, after a long drunken night out, brings home a man named Connor, played by Michael Fassbender.

From the moment he shows up, Fassbender injects an uneasy energy into the film, too focused on Mia, too interested in the one thing that seems to crack the grim facade she projects, her dancing. Alone in a room, a stolen beer to loosen her up, Mia dances with abandon, with something even approaching joy. Katie Jarvis perfectly captures that strange, powerful moment when a girl becomes aware of just how much sexual charisma she actually has, and the cat-and-mouse between her and the much-older Fassbender made my stomach hurt from tension as I watched it. Fassbender's been racking up one great performance after another in the last few years, but he still somehow retains the ability to vanish into his roles. I know it's the same guy in "Hunger" and "Inglorious Basterds" and this film, but the characters are nothing alike, not even visually. The extreme control of his craft as an actor works in perfect counterpoint to the raw unpolished nature of the work that Jarvis does.

Some truly awful things happen in the film, and even if Arnold gives us some release at the end, it's still shot through with a bleak melancholy, and it's a rough ride getting there. Arnold doesn't offer up easy explanations for Mia's anger, and she doesn't let her off the hook with some easy fix at the end. That's what makes this one linger, and it reaffirms that Arnold is a voice worth the attention.
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Post by Admin Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:09 pm

http://collectandcritique.blogspot.com/2010/01/fish-tank-andrea-arnold-2009-910.html

Thursday, January 21, 2010
Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold - 2009) - 9/10
Welcome to a hopeless and unforgiving underbelly within the newly-formed boundaries of British cinema dubbed "miserablism". Andrea Arnold writes and directs her latest 'Fish Tank' with an empathetic voice, about a 15-year old girl named Mia (played by newcomer Katie Jarvis in an intense, staggering debut) who aspires to become a hip-hop dancer, yet faces the dregs of her broken, apathetic upbringing alongside a younger sister by a single drunk slut of a mother. Mia, her mother, and her younger sister all dwell in this socially callous and abusive household environment. Her mother brings home a new boyfriend Connor, seductively played by Michael Fassbender, and things begin to complicate even further, as sexual tensions build between Mia and Connor. We eventually witness the anchors of living in a confined, nearly impoverished society getting the best of a young girl striving for ambition. Katie Jarvis gives Mia an undoubted "hardass" Brit character, harshly referring to everyone in her downtrodden path as the "C" word, picking fights with other girls who think they can dance hip hop, yet executing the kind of naivety you would expect from a 15-year old. She's a tough girl, taking matters into her own hands, and getting out of a situation almost as easily as she gets in; however, even the toughest gals succumb to social slavery, as dreams become unattainable. The film turns to what's most important: making a strong attempt to adjust and make things better before chasing dreams. I feel that the film's title instantly refers to the encased, and often ignored lower-class society - a sort of a "sub-home" from what would be considered "ideal living standards" - analogous to a fish being enclosed in a fish tank as opposed to the sea, and although the film takes a similar shape as many of the recent indie film highlights released by IFC Films within the past 3 years, it plays uniquely like a more optimistic Catherine Breillat coming-of-age tale, believe it or not, much like how last year's 'Ballast' concluded with an ending which may have still been considered "depressing", yet it in all reality was a sign of some kind of hope through a time of hardship. 'Fish Tank' is a paralyzing, and interestingly slow-burning suspenseful coming-of-age portrayal worthy of recent praise.
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Post by Admin Fri Jan 22, 2010 7:10 pm

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/01/fish-tank.html

January 18, 2010
"Fish Tank"

15

I see that IFC has done another of what I sometimes call its stealth releases of a first-rate film. I understand the company has its multi-platform strategy and all, but I have to say I do miss the days when arthouse films played long engagements and got to excite the imagination of a community, the days when, say, to name a not un-pertinent example, Pauline at the Beach would be the talk of at least a certain part of town. Guess I'm not immune to nostalgia. The completely pertinent point here is that British director Andrea Arnold's second feature, Fish Tank, is here, and is gonna be around in a variety of forms, and that you ought to see it by whatever means possible.

Like Red Road, Arnold's feature debut, and Wasp, her Oscar-winning short, FIsh Tank takes place in a pretty rough-and-tumble milieu, in and around a council estate—aka a "sink estate" in Essex, northeast of London. The heroine, Mia, is a brash teen girl (the exceptional Katie Jarvis), daughter of a single mom (Kierston Wareing) who's barely an adult herself. A new man (Michael Fassbender, as great here as he is in Hunger and Inglourious Basterds, and the best-known cast member) comes into the mother's life, and, rather dangerously, into Mia's. The storyline has its quivers and genuine shocks, and Arnolds sustains it beautifully. That, and the superb performances, might suffice to make Fish Tank a film of interest. But Arnold's incredibly deft and imaginative writing and direction make it much more than that.

First, there's Arnold's decision to shoot in what's called Academy ratio, the square-ish 1.33:1 frame format. It does create, in some scenes, a claustrophobic sense consonant with the film's title, but every now and again in exterior scenes Arnold's framing is more deliberately expansive, bringing home the impression of a big sky/universe hovering over the characters' cramped world. There's the canny, slightly cheeky way this woman director, making a film centered on female characters, makes Fassbender the movie's lust object (at least for a little while); his character, Connor, slinks around Mia and her mom's apartment shirtless, his jeans barely held up around his jutting hips. Even more interestingly, Arnold makes Connor a bit more sophisticated than anyone else in the picture. He's got good taste in music, particularly what the Brits call Northern Soul; Bobby Womack's cover of "California Dreamin' " becomes a ruefully ironic leitmotif in the film. "You cannot call Bobby Womack 'weird s$#!,'" he affectionately scolds Mia's mother. In a sense, he's a bit of an audience surrogate, which status gets dicey as his character turns more problematic. And the picture abounds with gorgeous little visual touches, such as the shot in which Mia takes a drink from the kitchen sink faucet; at first it looks to have been shot in slow motion, but on close examination one sees the action is merely being enacted slowly. And all these touches enhance and expand upon the multi-layered portrayals of the characters, their actions, and their psychology; the result is one of the richest films you'll see this year, guaranteed.

Posted at 02:23 PM in Movies | Permalink
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Post by Admin Sat Jan 23, 2010 1:33 am

http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/2010/fishtank.shtml

Fish Tank (2010)
Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)
Original Fin

By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Andrea Arnold's follow-up to her excellent debut feature Red Road is just as mysterious and powerful; it's like a lower-class version of An Education but far more effective. Mia (Katie Jarvis) lives in the cruddy projects east of London, affecting a tough exterior, picking fights and getting into trouble, but she's really just searching for affection. She seeks solace by retreating to a vacant apartment to practice her hip-hop dancing. When her seductive, slutty blonde mother (Kierston Wareing) invites her new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender), to stay at the house, Mia responds with her usual defensiveness, but is knocked off guard by the handsome thirtysomething's naked, chiseled torso. She begins developing a relationship with him; he becomes a kind of fatherly protector at first, but eventually Mia's need grows beyond this and moves into more dangerous territory. Arnold is a watcher and a follower, and she includes an astounding array of throwaway details that exude their own life force. The landscape is appropriately rundown and hardscrabble, and even the gray weather seems right. But Arnold is a clever cinematic storyteller as well, and she includes intriguing parallel details such as a sick, old horse that Mia attempts to free from its chains. The penultimate scene, with Mia and her mom sharing a dance to Nas' "Life's a Bitch," is a stunner, and I wish the movie had either stopped there, or kept going for a few more hours.
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Post by Admin Sat Jan 23, 2010 2:14 am

http://onlinemovie12.blogspot.com/2010/01/watch-free-online-fish-tank-english.html

Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Watch free online Fish Tank English movie Trailer Hollywood Superhit Fish Tank Film review cast photos overview
Fish Tank English Movie 2010
Romanctic Movie
Cast & Crew
Actor: Harry Treadaway, Kierston Wareing, Michael Fassbender
Director: Andrea Arnold
Producer: Paul Trijbits, David M. Thompson, Nick Laws, Christine Langan, Lisette Kelder, Kees Kasander
Screenwriter: Andrea Arnold
Editor: Nicolas Chaudeurge
Genre: Drama
Release Date: January 15, 2010
Runtime: 123 min

Fish Tank English Film Plot: Life changes for volatile, 15-year-old Mia (Jarvis) when her mum (Wareing) brings home a new boyfriend (Fassbender), who takes an interest in the young woman. Watch online Movie Trailer freeFish Tank English Hollywood Film.The film Directed by Andrea Arnold.

Fish Tank Synopsis :
Fifteen-year-old Mia's world is turned upside down when her mother brings home a new boyfriend.
Fifteen-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) is in a constant state of war with her family, her school and her neighbors, without any constructive creative outlet for her considerable energies save a secret love of hip-hop dancing. When she meets her party-girl mother’s charming new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender), she is amazed to find him returning her attention, and believes he can help her start to make sense of her life—though his seemingly tender demeanor may hide a much more treacherous interior.

A clear-eyed, potent portrait of teenage sexuality and vulnerability, Fish Tank confirms Oscar®️ winning filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s stature as one of the leading figures of new British cinema. Fifteen-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) is in a constant state of war with her family, herschool and her neighbors, without any constructive creative outlet for her energies save a secret love of hip-hop dancing. When she meets her party-girl mother’s (Kierston Wareing) charming new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender), she is amazed to find him returning her attention, and believes he can help her start to make sense of her life—though his seemingly tender demeanor may hide a much more treacherous interior.Fish Tank recently received British Independent Film Awards for Best Director (Andrea Arnold) and Most Promising Newcomer

Fish Tank Hollywood Movie Review :

Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank has hit the road running to Hollywood ! Already it has won the Jury prize at Cannes, and 2 awards for one of it's star's Katie Jarvis (one of top 25 trailblazers 2009 and Best British newcomer) at the Edingburgh Film Festival. Its established stars Michael Fassbender(Hunger)Kirsten Wsareing(recently of Martina Cole's The Take),Harry Treadaway(City of Ember) are excellent, but Andrea's choice of the novice girl's of Essex, have no trouble fitting in with the above.Katie Jarvis-brilliant- and Hollywood have already knocked at her door,Rebecca Griffiths, funny as hell,Charlotte Collins,realistic head butt and enemy to front Katie, and Chelsey Chase,loads of verbal, all with raw and naturalistic performances that can compete with best. All we can say is, it's true what they say about Essex's Girls, they are the best,just look at who these girl's can look up too, Helen Mirren (Southend Girl) comes too mind ,and she ain't done bad.Roll on the Irish,Toronto and SundanceFilm Festival's-FISH TANK is nipping at Slumdogs heels, and that over in the big pond some of the big fish will take the bait. Well done Andrea Arnold and Nick Laws.

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 afish 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.
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Post by Admin Sat Jan 23, 2010 3:56 am

http://www.mydigitalfc.com/leisure-writing/fish-tank-308

Fish Tank

By International Herald Tribune Jan 21 2010
Tags: Leisure Writing
Fish Tank
Mia, the 15-year-old protagonist of Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold’s tough and brilliant second feature, moves with such speed and fury that she seems to be trying to flee not only from her bleak surroundings but also from the movie itself. The narrow, nearly square frame boxes Mia in, and Arnold’s on-the-run hand-held tracking shots increase the sense of panicky claustrophobia. Living in a cramped apartment in a British housing project that stands like a cluster of megaliths in the middle of nowhere, Mia is at once trapped and adrift, unable to contain or to express the feelings seething beneath the blank, sullen mien she usually presents to the world.

In the first scenes she comes across a group of girls practising hip-hop dance moves on a patch of asphalt. She taunts and provokes these apparent rivals, pushing the confrontation toward violence and delivering a nose-breaking head butt to one of them. A few minutes later Mia is in a fenced-in vacant lot trying to free a horse tethered to a concrete block. She swerves from rage to tenderness, and may not even know which is which.

What does Mia want? To be free, to be safe, to be left alone, to be loved. The contradictions of adolescence have rarely been conveyed with such authenticity and force. Though Mia is poor, unruly and obviously, in social-work parlance, at risk— her mother (Kierston Wareing) and younger sister, with whom she lives, are equally volatile, or even more so —Fish Tank is not drawn from the case files, and does not solicit pity. Rather, thanks to Arnold’s fine-grained realism and the astonishing performance of Katie Jarvis, the nonprofessional actress who plays Mia, it is a diamond-hard reflection on the peril and progress of a fragile soul in a bad situation. A trained actor might have taken care to sort out and communicate Mia’s emotions, giving the audience a clear perspective on the girl’s inner life. Instead, Jarvis’s tentative, sometimes opaque self-presentation registers the crucial fact about Mia, which is her confusion. She is a puzzle to herself, unable to understand, much less control, her fury, her desire or her fear. When she dances alone in an empty apartment, she is not exactly at peace, but at least in a state of cease-fire in her ongoing war with herself and everything else.

Although she prefers to be alone, Mia craves connection. She develops a tentative friendship with one of the young men who keep that poor half-metaphorical horse, and a far more complicated relationship with Connor (Michael Fassbender), her mother’s new boyfriend. Mom, slightly less miserable and abusive when drunk — and therefore, perhaps luckily for Mia, rarely sober — has brought home a bit of decency as well as fun. Or so it appears. Connor is friendly, generous and easy in the company of Mia and Sophie, her prickly, foulmouthed little sister.
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Post by Admin Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:51 am

http://cinemaroll.com/cinemarolling/fish-tank/

Fish Tank

Published in Cinemarolling by Spencer Hawken, on January 23, 2010

Andrea Arnold’s disturbing movie portrait of a young girls life on a gritty Barking council estate.

It seems that the British movies that receive the most acclaim are the ones that have aspects of real life in them; moments of airiness when really nothing very much seems to happen, while of course telling a story, Fish Tank is one of those movies.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a fifteen-year-old girl living in a rough estate in Barking, Essex; Mia is not living the life most of us would want for their daughters, she has a dysfunctional relationship with both her mother and sister. Add to this she has aggressive issues that hold her back, she’s always in fights and the only school options now available for her are at a boarding school for problem children. Mia has dreams of being a dancer, and practises religiously in one of the deserted flats several floors up from hers; she also has dreams of being loved.

Acclaimed director Andrea Arnold (Red Road) delivers a gritty, dirty look at life when you’re trapped by surroundings and finance. It’s a snapshot of life at the rough end of the stick, not just for Mia but for the majority of the characters we encounter during the movie. Arnold has no desire however to deliver a fairytale ending for the movie, or anything remotely like, happiness is short lived, sadness prolonged. Arnold’s glimmer of hope comes in the form of Connor (Eden Lake’s Michael Fassbender), the new love interest of Mia’s mother Joanne (played by The Take’s Kierston Wareing).

The main story of Fish Tank follows the relationship between Joanne and Connor and how it splays out across the rest of the family. As this warm kind hearted Irishman moves in and builds a small level of security the disturbing incestuous (although granted he is not the children’s father) motives behind the what would otherwise casual relationship come out. It’s the nature of the relationship you the viewer see’s but Mia’s own mother cannot that takes Fish Tank out of the very ordinary to something quite sinister and incredibly disturbing. From the night Connor carries Mia off too bed when she passes out drunk you can see exactly where the relationship is going, and its not anywhere near anything you could regard as nice.

Sadly what would be an effective little movie gets its message diluted as the relationships between the characters take a new although believable turn. But the problem for the movie is that when you begin to surrender yourself into believing the movie is over; it’s got an awful long way to go still and what should be a ninety minute movie forces itself to go on for a further 30 minutes, making the movies statement, for me at least a lot less strong.

As usual Fish Tank has received much acclaim, and like every movie you believe might be good based on the thoughts of others turns out to be much less impressive. Don’t get me wrong Fish Tank is still a good movie, its edgy and has much to offer but its not as good as I was expecting.

Hats off, whatever you think of the movie to Katie Jarvis a girl caught by the pre-production crew having a fight with her boyfriend at a train station in Essex, and has been catapulted into stardom with absolutely no acting experience at all. She handles the movie like a real pro at all times and is an absolute delight to watch.

On a more personal note the film does give a very false impression of Essex, linking the towns of Romford, Barking and Tilbury together like they are almost the same place. With no money Mia moves seamlessly between the three locations, with only once any evidence that there might be distance between the locations. This smacks a bit when the movie repeatedly names the locations, making the movie geographically flawed.

Fish Tank is indeed a movie that you should see, if only to remind yourself to be careful when moving in a new member to your already built family, because you never quite know what your going to get.
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Post by Admin Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:37 pm

http://susansink.blogspot.com/2010/01/fish-tank.html

Sunday, January 24, 2010
Fish Tank
While in Palm Springs, we attended three shows at the Palm Springs Film Festival. The best of the three was Fish Tank, directed by Andrea Arnold. It's her second film, and I was already a big fan of her first one, Red Road. Both films do an extraordinary thing-- humanize a man who does something bad, and make you see the toxicity of modern urban environments on good people. Both are dark films, but very real and not at all gratuitous, redeemed by their basic sense of human goodness and the power of mercy. In fact, I think Red Road is one of the best films about mercy-- which must be extended by both the principal actors-- I've ever seen.

Both films take place in what in the United States would be called "projects" but in the UK are called "council estates." Red Road takes place in Scotland (by far the most challenging thing about the film is understanding the dialogue) and Fish Tank in England. Much has been made of the performance by Katie Jarvis, a newcomer that Arnold supposedly discovered on a train platform where Jarvis was having an argument with her boyfriend. I doubt she's a great acrtess, but she's perfectly cast in this role. She is fierce, fearless and out of control. At the same time, she is awkward and confused about love and sex as only a raging teenage girl in the projects can be. The actor in the lead, Michael Fassbender, was equally if not more amazing in his role. He was also the best thing (in my opinion) in Inglorious Basterds, as the language expert helping the Americans negotiate in a German bar (the best scene in that movie).

I don't want to give anything away, but this film covers my favorite all-time territory, one of my primary themes. It is the fact that the world is basically violent, and that the violence comes from ordinary, even good people-- from where you least expect it. The violence is often invisible to us on a day-to-day basis, but expectations of it and experience of it color everything we see and do. We either flat out deny it in a way that doesn't make it any less real, or we accommodate it so that it doesn't stop us from moving forward. I don't mean to overplay it, but sexual violence, the violence of war, the violence of car crashes, are all around us-- if not in our own home, then in our neighbor's homes. Mia, Katie Jarvis's character, is an embodiment of this everyday violence, as is basically everyone in the film. How are these violent people going to carve out roles and ways of being with each other that are sustaining and life-giving?

What Arnold does in her films is make us jump to conclusions, then undermine those assumptions, and continue to complicate those assumptions until we see life as it is, at least in these places where poverty and social fragmentation and toxic cultural elements like rap music permeate the lives of everyone.
Posted by Susan Sink at 12:49 PM
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Post by Admin Sun Jan 24, 2010 10:45 pm

http://movieswithabe.com/2010/01/movie-with-abe-fish-tank.html

Sunday, January 24, 2010
Movie with Abe: Fish Tank

Fish Tank
Directed by Andrea Arnold
Released January 15, 2010

There is a certain type of film and style of filmmaking that deserves classification in the category of the definitive independent film. Such projects often use unknown actors and focus on extensive character development and deep, interpersonal conversation. Less is always more, and searing dramas seasoned with just a bit of humor are the most common genre. The film primarily boasts a tour de force breakout leading performance, but the entire ensemble is also stronger than it may initially seem. “Fish Tank” fits all those qualifications, and executes them spectacularly, cementing it as the first movie not to be missed in 2010.

The most astounding aspect of “Fish Tank” is the debut of its leading actress. Katie Jarvis was only seventeen years when the film was made (she’s now eighteen), and delivers an exceptionally mature performance that resonates well beyond her years. Her casting in the film, which came about as a result of a loud argument with her boyfriend in a train station, proves that Jarvis has an intimate relationship with this character, and she understands and sympathizes with the anger she has inside of her. Mia, the protagonist in “Fish Tank,” is like a cross between Jenny from “An Education” and Precious from “Precious,” but there’s something starkly different about her. Mia isn’t a kind soul just waiting for the right outlet to let out her compassion. She’s a disgruntled, irritable teenager who goes out of her way to cause trouble and tries not to make friends.

Mia is hardly one-dimensional, and Jarvis embodies her with such energy and disdain that it’s impossible not to be immensely captivated by her. Her true passion is also wonderfully fresh – urban dancing – and some of the film’s most moving moments come when the eternally frowning Mia finally finds a moment of peace and temporary satisfaction in the midst of the intensity of practicing her routine. Jarvis’ portrayal is an extraordinarily involved and powerful one that elevates the film to another level of quality.

Jarvis may be the star, but she isn’t the only noteworthy element of the film. The other members of her dysfunctional family unit, young Rebecca Griffiths as her foul-mouthed sister Tyler and Kierston Wareing as her abusive, promiscuous mother Joanne, are just as dynamic and real as Mia herself. Mia’s attitude becomes all the more understandable when the environment in which she has been brought up is revealed. Also excellent in the film is Michael Fassbender, last seen ordering drei glaser in “Inglourious Basterds,” as Joanne’s new boyfriend who develops a close relationship with Mia. He’s been around for longer than Jarvis, but keeping an eye on him in the future would be just as beneficial. Director Andrea Arnold has also proven herself an impressive director with her second feature film. “Fish Tank” is a gripping, depressing movie that doesn’t cut corners and try to fabricate a happy ending out of its devastating story. There are no illusions in “Fish Tank,” and that makes it an incredible and fascinating experience.

B+

Posted by Abe Fried-Tanzer at 1/24/2010
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Post by Admin Mon Jan 25, 2010 2:08 am

http://mllefaden.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/fish-tank-2009/

January 25, 2010...04:43
Fish Tank – 2009

The proverbial time period known as “coming-of-age” isn’t exactly easy for anyone. Teetering on the chasm that sits between childhood and adulthood is strange and confusing but after watching Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, I can say that for me, puberty was a breeze.

At least in comparison to Mia Williams’ (Katie Jarvis) formative years. From the beginning of the film, Fish Tank’s protagonist is characterized as wild and unpredictable. But within a few scenes, it becomes obvious that all poor Mia wants is to escape from the restrictions imposed upon her by her floozy mother, cramped apartment and position on the bottom rungs of the English social ladder. Unfortunately, for Mia, this escape is embodied in the arrival of her mother’s new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender); a handsome man with a nice build who feeds her fifteen year old ego and treats her family like his own. When Mia forms feelings for her mother’s new beau, it is something that can be seen from miles away.

Yet, the film handles this all-too-predictable plot marvelously. The narrative is told almost entirely from the perspective of Mia, leaving the viewer as confused, surprised and manipulated as she is. Although at times, each twist and turn can be foreseen, interesting techniques give the plot vision. The viewer forms a certain relationship with Mia. Slow, naturally lit sequences with artistic close-ups show Mia dancing to her favorite music. Scenes in which only the noise of Mia’s breath can be heard also add to this intimacy. It is through these techniques that the film transcends a common “coming-of-age story” and becomes a work of art that emotionally ties the viewer to the subject.

Although the story of a troubled teen grappling for identity and comfort is by no means unique, Mia’s story has a literary quality that sets it apart. As Mia steals alcohol and sneaks into abandoned apartments, the narrative weaves through a variety of interesting themes. The film centers on everything from class division to the proliferation of an MTV culture to the idea of finding solace in nature. Yet, the most potent and grasping motif is the idea of the caged, wild beast. Within the first few moments of the film, Mia comes across a gaunt horse in a seemingly abandoned area – a place she returns to throughout the film. In this horse, the viewer can see Mia, a girl struggling to thrive with virtually no way to escape. As she makes attempts to free the horse, the viewer wishes they could help Mia out of her own, inescapable cage.
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Post by Admin Mon Jan 25, 2010 7:37 pm

http://edan-dolly.com/2010/01/25/coming-up-for-air/

Coming up for air

Posted by Olly On January - 25 - 2010

The naughty noughties have expired, leaving the media nothing to do but reminisce on the decade that was.

Or wasn’t. The general consensus seems to be that the greatest advances made in the arts over the last ten years have been technological. In music, television and cinema, the industry has been falling over itself to cater for the interests of lonely, headphones-wearing teenagers plonked in front of oft numerous monitors. In music, this has led to a dilution of quality, a dearth of new music, and the now-terminal decline of the music album. Television and cinema, on the other hand, have proved more adaptable, with the explosion of reality television causing an about-turn in our expectations. Contemporary audiences now want to see, besides the customary blockbusters, something they can believe in. ‘Gritty realism’, to coin a phrase, is the name of the day (or decade, rather), and is what has led to the success of series like The Wire as well as films like Fahrenheit 9/11.

In the case of the aforementioned, the ‘grittiness’ stems from minimal camera work combined with a no-star cast. The latter is particularly important: actors act, the rest of us don’t. We can only be ourselves. Fish Tank (2009), with the only recognisable face being that of Michael Fassbender, demonstrates perfectly the benefits of this absence of artifice. Its protagonist, Mia Williams, is played by Katie Jarvis, a teenager plucked from council estate-obscurity to play what turns out to be a starring role. Fame has not changed her, however, as even when Fish Tank was awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Jarvis declined to attend in favour of staying at home – the same estate as before – to take care of her newborn baby.

Fish Tank itself shows a similar refusal to bow to convention. Its story follows fifteen-year-old Mia, who has just been expelled from school and is left to fill her time wandering aimlessly around her council estate. Her friends have turned against her, while her family, consisting of a prepubescent sister and an alcoholic mother, live forever in denial of one another’s existence. What quality time they have is spent in front of the television and all of them, the youngest included, drink to oblivion. Yet there is hope in the form of Mia’s talent for street dancing, as well as the arrival of a new man in her mother’s life. Connor (Fassbender) brings the family together, insisting from the start on including the children in everything the couple do. He emboldens Mia, showing her the attention she craves deep down and encouraging her to take her dancing to a professional level. The question, of course, is whether their newfound domestic bliss can last.

For all its realism, Fish Tank is rife with symbolism and ambiguities. It is shot beautifully, with endless richly-coloured landscapes alongside intimate close-ups of characters, and speaks more through the power of its visuals than through its (mostly minimal) dialogue. Recurring images of animals in chains, such as the white horse that Mia twice tries to set free, show clearly the dangers of living in a confined environment, namely, that a person loses all perspective and with it any real sense of who they are. Thus, at the film’s heart, lies a simple identity crisis. It is not so much a case of Mia having to escape the estate; rather, she must learn to appreciate her human potential and how to apply it in any setting.

Perhaps the worst aspect of growing up is that we expect steadily less from others. Yet, when this happens, and whether we notice it or not, we come to expect more from ourselves. Fish Tank shows that human beings are not to be holed up and ‘taught’ independence (by, for example, a social worker like Mia’s) but must learn it for themselves.
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Post by Admin Mon Jan 25, 2010 8:18 pm

http://mskatej.livejournal.com/331548.html

Two things that have recently blown my mind.
Friday Night Lights, 4.10: I Can't

I am speechless. Weirdly I would have enjoyed this episode a lot more if I had been spoiled for the ending, because as it was I spent the entire time dreading the inevitable 'change of heart', where Becky would decide that it was an okay idea to ruin her life because this is American television and girls don't GET abortions. So for the brave and brilliant Friday Night Lights to go down that route I am so damn grateful you have no idea. No miscarriage, no plans to have it and give it up for adoption, but a young girl realistically making an extraordinarily tough - but right for her - decision. Thank you, FNL. THANK YOU.


Fish Tank

I watch a lot of films but it has been a while since a film has blown me away quite like Fish Tank, and I urge you all to seek it out because it really is a stunning achievement, and one of last year's best films, in my opinion. It's hard not to compare it to An Education, but where that film felt strangely dishonest to me, Fish Tank hits all the right notes and for that reason it's a far more emotionally resonant, shocking and captivating piece of film-making.

And if you're not sold yet then I'll give you a real reason to see the film: it is HOT.

So very hot.

Which, as you know, is the quickest and best way to win my heart. Behind the cut is a longish post - which contains some spoilers - about this disturbingly sexy film.

Our protagonist is Mia, a fifteen year old girl living with her mother and younger sister in an extremely poor area of outer London; she's a loner with no real friends, and no one who cares for her (least of all her mother). There's not a lot to do where she lives so she spends much of her time wandering the streets, although secretly she harbours a desire to make it as a hip hop dancer - she's not very good, but there is something incredibly touching about the scenes where she sneaks into an abandoned house to practice; it's clearly the one avenue through which she can release some of her pent-up aggression. She's sullen, angry, and rude, yet still a deeply sympathetic character, thanks to a mesmerising performance by non-professional actor, Katie Jarvis.

Life for Mia becomes a lot more interesting with the arrival of Connor (played by the utterly delicious and talented Michael Fassbender), her mother's new boyfriend. The first time Mia (and the audience) meets Connor is in the kitchen one morning, where he catches her dancing in her PJs in front of a Ja Rule music video. He tells her not to stop dancing - he was enjoying watching her - then he saunters in and starts making a cup of tea. He's wearing only a pair of low-slung jeans that hang enticingly off his ass, and his remarkable physique instantly gets Mia's attention. [I really want screencaps of that entire scene btw.] We're right in her POV and the way the camera lingers on his body is unabashedly erotic (I do try to support female directors anyway but honestly this is one of the reasons most of my favourite directors are women: the female gaze). We experience Mia's lust, and we also instantly appreciate his interest in her. This is probably the first time in her life she's been encouraged by anyone, and while there's a possible attraction on his part, he's not a predatory monster - he's a kind person (who happens to have an excess of sexual charisma), and Mia is in dire need of some kindness in her life.

[Now, in most mainstream films, teenage girls' sexuality is generally ignored. We are repeatedly told that girls don't want sex, they want romance. Which obviously is total bullshit, so for a film to actually deal with a fifteen year old girl's sexuality with such frankness is one of the reasons this picture is so great. The truth is, at fifteen years old I would have fallen madly in love with Connor and I wouldn't have given a s$#! that he was too old for me.]

What follows is spellbinding - a perfectly paced, increasingly erotic story that has the courage of its convictions. I defy any of you to watch this and not be deeply invested in the complex dynamic between Mia and Connor; their relationship is both disturbing and believable, and yes, sexy as all hell. Their scenes together are utterly electric because Andrea Arnold (the director) understands, as Andrew O'Hehir points out, that, "illicit or forbidden sex is often the hottest -- however we may feel about it seconds or hours later."

Very true, Andrew. Very true.

I won't spoil you any more than I already have, but I will say that this film is basically perfect, except for a scene towards the end which, imo, clashes with the understated mood of the rest of the piece.

So, has anyone else see it?
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Post by Admin Mon Jan 25, 2010 8:33 pm

http://myworldbanklunches.blogspot.com/2010/01/fish-tank.html

Monday, January 25, 2010
Fish Tank

Sara and Susan and I watched Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009) in a small packed IFC theater. There was nothing wrong with this film- it is perfect. Fish Tank is an excellent portrayal of a young woman's complex hive of emotions, particularly frustration, rage, tenderness and desire. It's rare that you get to see this fragile time in a woman's life (Mia is 15) portrayed from her perspective and with such honesty, raw authenticity. Perhaps this is because Katie Jarvis who plays Mia is not a professional actress and was asked to audition for this part when she was found on a subway platform in a screaming argument with her boyfriend. Her little sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) is hilarious and heart-breaking as a scratchy-voiced smart-mouth, and Michael Fassbender as her mother's boyfriend, Conner, is extremely attractive and complicated. The whole story is allowed to come together because of the perfect fit of all these characters. The film just never stops, it pushes through to the very end without a breath. I loved Arnold's previous film, Red Road, and I can't wait to see what she does next.
Posted by La Kaje at 2:32
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Post by Admin Mon Jan 25, 2010 9:02 pm

http://www.mnweekly.ru/cinema/20100125/55404851.html

25/01/2010 | Moscow News №02 2010
Movie of the week: Fish Tank

This movie was one of last year's minor festival hits, having collected, among other trophies, the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie also brought the British Independent Film Award in the Best Director category to Andrea Arnold and the award in the Most Promising Newcomer category to Katie Jarvis.

The movie tells a story of 15-year-old Mia Williams (Jarvis) who lives in Essex with her single mother and younger sister.

Not exactly an exemplary child, Mia often finds herself in trouble with the authorities, which eventually leads to her expulsion from school. Meanwhile, her only passion is urban dancing, and she practices it in a deserted apartment on her estate.

But Mia's life begins to change when one day her mother brings home her new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender). At first, he appears to be willing to become a father figure to his girlfriend's daughters, but gradually his relationship with Mia develops into something quite far away from what a regular father/daughter relationship should be. All that triggers a series of impulsive actions by Mia, which don't make the lives of all involved any easier.

In addition to a good festival circuit performance, the movie, which is Arnold's second effort, was generally well received by film critics. A reviewer for NYC Movie Guru described it as an emotionally devastating, well-shot and captivating coming-of-age drama boasting "a brave and raw performance by the radiant Katie Jarvis".
"The contradictions of adolescence have rarely been conveyed with such authenticity and force," commented The New York Times' film critic.

35 mm:

Thu. and Fri. 12:10 pm, 7 pm, 9:20 pm, Sat. 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm, 10 pm, Sun. 11:50 am, 4 pm, 8:10 pm, Mon. 12:30 pm, 9:40 pm

Pioner Cinema: Mon. 1 pm and 6 pm

-Vladimir Kozlov
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Post by Pilar Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:35 am

Crap, I wanna see this.
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Post by Admin Tue Jan 26, 2010 5:52 pm

http://chiaroscurocoalition.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/too-young-an-education-and-fish-tank/

In stark contrast, Fish Tank’s Mia has very few options to escape the doldrums of the day to day on her Essex council estate. Andrea Arnold’s festival hit has received a certain amount of over praising, both in the UK and now in the US, but it’s a small film with virtually no hype and no hope of much in the way of major awards, and even if that doesn’t change my view of it, I can’t begrudge the accolades. It is also far more deserving of what it’s been getting than An Education.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a fifteen year-old living in a tower block flat with her borderline-negligent mother Joanne (Kierston Wearing) and her younger sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths). She longs to be a dancer, emulating the moves of the girls in hip hop videos and looking on enviously as others her age on the estate form dance troupes. She’s a bundle of defensive rage, exploding into violence when she can’t control her feelings and running off around the industrial parks that make up her dreary town. The setting will be familiar in type if not location to followers of the British social realism of Ken Loach, himself carrying on a tradition going back to the kitchen sink dramas of the 60s. The genre has become a bundle of clichés over the years, depicting the underclass as luckless victims of late capitalism with little to no hope of escape, often for the nodding satisfaction of audiences suffering from middle class guilt. While the genre is important in informing our expectations for the characters and, indeed, ratcheting up the tension later in the film, Arnold does differentiate Fish Tank by infusing the visual style with a sense of flowing poetry usually missing from Loach’s handheld, docudrama aesthetic. A tight Academy ratio never lets us forget the claustrophobic smallness of Mia’s world, but the long-take steadicam following shots that compose a large amount of the running time give us the sense of freedom she has to roam in her little world. Beyond the grey concrete and rusted wire lie fields of grass and an ever-present sky. While hardly picturesque escapism, there is beauty amongst the grime.

Joanne is still young at heart, unwilling to give up her drinking and partying ways even though she has a teenager in the house. Mia is forced to stay upstairs in her room while her mother stays up with her friends drinking and dancing in the living room. Joanne meets an attractive mate in Connor (Michael Fassbender), who quickly sets himself apart from what we presume to be her normal class of men by being interesting, caring, and not condescending. As he fulfills the father role Mia has clearly been without for a long while, her adolescent maturing confuses her feelings and the inevitable but still gut-wrenching tension in their relationship tightens and tightens until its almost unbearable. Make no mistake, this can be a very stressful film, and Arnold does an excellent job of balancing her gliding camera while constantly raising the stakes from role model affection to something more inappropriate and well beyond seamlessly. I won’t spoil everything, but there’s a truly terrifying sequence where we have absolutely no idea what is going to happen. Our knowledge of the bleakness of the genre combined with a cunning piece of foreshadowing make for a powerful turn of the plot, and I cannot applaud the skill involved enough.

Katie Jarvis has been justifiably lauded for her performance. Supposedly spotted by the casting director having an argument with her boyfriend on a train platform, one can easily write this off as her merely playing herself, but portraying that vulnerable anger and confusion is no easy task, and she clearly has a natural talent. Fassbender is fantastic here, and combined with his recent turns in Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, he’s certainly the acting find of 2009. Connor is in equal measure fatherly, understanding, and lecherous. His drunken regret makes the character, if not sympathetic (he certainly is not that), then at least understandable.

The film is not without its problems, some of which are significant. On the smaller scale, Arnold uses brief freeze-frames to emphasize moments of intimacy, but it doesn’t really work. Soderbergh used the tactic to heighten the playful sensuality between his two leads in Out of Sight, which worked in that film’s aesthetic while here it is on the nose and distracting. The dance motif is a mixed bag, working thematically more or less but failing at key points in execution. I can forgive the quick editing during Mia’s practice sessions to an extent, as it seems obvious that Jarvis just can’t dance and sometimes you just have to cut around a performance to make it work. I do like the fact that she sees her passion more as a glamorous escape rather than an expression of sexuality, and the way that conflict works during a seduction scene is great. However, the ties with her mother and the resolution as a whole fail miserably, almost fatally. Likewise a side plot that leads to a very disappointing conclusion to the film itself is underdeveloped, and while any epilogue would be hard pressed to handle to the build-up and the climax, at the end of the day it is far from satisfactory.

Still, an imperfect beast though it is, Fish Tank’s triumphs outweigh its failings. Arnold has incredible potential, and I would definitely recommend the film for its beauty, tension, and the performances. The mixing of gritty realism and visual poetry with a dash of surrealism works far better than you might expect. And in comparison with the shallow, nostalgic nothingness of An Education, it is positively a masterpiece. So if you only see one coming-of-age story about inappropriate relationships this year…

-M
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Post by Admin Wed Jan 27, 2010 3:01 am

http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=9704&catid=110&volume_id=452&issue_id=469&volume_num=44&issue_num=17

Pit bull in a pony tail
Hold your breath for Fish Tank's girl on the verge
BY CHERYL EDDY
Wednesday January 27, 2010
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cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM There's been a string of movies lately pondering what Britney once called the not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman syndrome. Two 2009 entries will earn Oscar nominations: Lone Scherfig's An Education, about a 1960s British 16-year-old who learns a hard lesson about trusting an older, slippery suitor; and Lee Daniels' Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire, about a 1980s Harlem girl who's already learned a lifetime of hard lessons by her 16th birthday. I'm not the first reviewer to compare either of these films to Fish Tank (both it and Precious snagged prestigious festival prizes in 2009), and I'm probably not alone in saying that Andrea Arnold's gritty new drama is the superior choice among the three. If there's justice, Fish Tank won't be forgotten when next year's award nominations roll out. (Arnold's no stranger to Academy gold, having already picked up a statuette for her 2003 short film, Wasp.)

I'll admit it: I'm an Arnold fanatic.

If I had to point to one new filmmaker whose work most excites me, I'd likely pick Arnold. Her films are heartbreaking, but in an unforced way that never feels manipulative; her characters, often portrayed by nonactors, feel completely organic.

When I spoke to Arnold before the release of her 2006 Red Road — about a CCTV operator who hatches a slow-boil revenge plot — she elaborated on why she populates her scripts with such ordinary, yet deeply complex, characters: "I think all human beings are very complicated in their circumstances and their environments — sometimes people don't always behave in the best way. It doesn't mean to say that they're bad. I like seeing people who may not be easily likable to start. But then when you get to understand them more, you have empathy for them."

She was referring to the main character of Red Road. But she could have just as easily been describing Mia, Fish Tank's 15-year-old heroine. (In a story that kicks Lana Turner's famous star-is-born moment in the teeth, first-time actor Katie Jarvis was discovered while arguing with her boyfriend at a train station.) Mia lives with her party-gal single mom and tweenage sister in a public-housing high-rise; all three enjoy drinking, swearing, and shouting. Mia is particularly good at slamming doors and sprinting away from trouble. The other girls in the 'hood hate her; her only friend is a neighbor's raggedy pony, whose tied-up existence both frustrates and fascinates her.

But much like sparkly-dreamer Precious, Mia has a secret passion: hip-hop dancing, which she practices with track-suited determination. And much like An Education's Jenny, Mia's stumbling path toward womanhood becomes ever-more confusing with the appearance of an older man — here, mom's foxy new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender, from 2008's Hunger). At first, it's unclear what Connor's intentions are. Is he trying to be a cool father figure, or something far more inappropriate?

Without giving away too much, it's hard to fear too much for a girl who headbutts a teenage rival within the film's first few minutes — though it soon becomes apparent Mia's hard façade masks a vulnerable ...

core. Her desire to make human connections causes her to drop her guard when she needs it the most. In a movie about coming of age, a young girl's bumpy emotional journey is expected turf. But Fish Tank earns its poignant moments honestly — most coming courtesy of Jarvis, who has soulfullness to spare. Whether she's acting out in tough-girl mode or revealing a glimpse of her fragile inner life, Arnold's camera relays it all, with unglossy matter-of-factness.

FISH TANK OPENS FRI/29 IN BAY AREA THEATERS.
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Post by Admin Wed Jan 27, 2010 5:14 pm

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/stormy-weather/Content?oid=1577018

January 27, 2010 Movies » Movies
Stormy Weather
A tempest in a fleshpot (Fish Tank) and a maelstrom of indecision (Storm).
By Kelly Vance

Fish Tank
Written and directed by Andrea Arnold. With Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, and Kierston Wareing. Opens Friday.

January, like August, is usually a serendipitous month for moviegoers who get their kicks poking around neighborhood movie houses looking for the odd and overlooked little orphans that always seem to wash ashore at the end of the big-money season. These are the films that rush in to plug the holes in plex programming or, better yet, never play the plexes at all. The ones you'll be able to keep in your own private stash. Films like Fish Tank and Storm.

Mia Williams (played by Katie Jarvis), the fifteen-year-old lead character of Fish Tank, doesn't appear to have a friend in the world. Slim and wiry, with abused but delicate features, dressed in cheap athletic gear with her dark hair hastily cropped, Mia gives the appearance of a young woman who would "clean up" just fine — but she has no intention of changing her grooming habits or doing any other favors for those around her. She's glamorous as only a poor girl can be, a rose blooming on a manure pile.

Skittering around the depressing high-rise council flats near Tilbury in the county of Essex, east of London, where she lives with her similarly vexed mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), and younger sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) — a place of hip-hop and pit bulls and ale at any hour of the day — Mia clashes noisily with everyone she meets, from break-dancing teenagers to a family of young guys who keep a horse tethered outside their trailer. She's the odd girl out, the un-Precious.

Mia's latter-day kitchen-sink sphere of existence is the stuff of countless dramas about the foibles of the English lower classes, but writer-director Andrea Arnold obviously sees new and undiscovered narratives where so many have trod before. Former TV actor Arnold and her nonprofessional female lead take what might have been a festival of self-loathing and neglect and steer it into rarer, more unfamiliar turf using the power of personality.

Bored and contemptuous of her surroundings, Mia never ventures far from home until she spies a "Female Dancer Wanted" flier. Grim as the prospects may be — essentially it's a club looking for strippers — the prospective gig appeals to her talent for movement. At last, something she can aspire to. The alternative is sitting in front of the TV for hours like smart-mouthed little Tyler, or mellowing into a slack slut like her mother, awash in alcohol and cigarettes. Mia is accustomed to nonstop sexual threats from every angle, but her mom's new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender), is something new. Lean and muscular, like a combo of Jeremy Irons and a young Ryan O'Neal, the affable security guard openly flirts with Mia. It's only a matter of time until they tumble.

But ultimately there's Mia's self-awareness and attitude to deal with, keyed to Bobby Womack's version of "California Dreamin'." Absolutely no fakey uplift in Mia's coming of age. The through-stories for Mia, Tyler, their mother, and Connor probably don't amount to a hill of beans, not even when the "second chance" destination of Cardiff, Wales, is factored in. But there's always hope, at least as long as Mia keeps her moves and her looks.

In the starring role, first-timer Jarvis could not be improved upon — she's the ideal synthesis of adolescent desire and contempt. Irish-bred, German-native actor Fassbender turns in a crafty piece of work as Connor, the moonlighting lover. We're never quite sure what's going through his mind, other than that he's dick-deep in females most of the time. Reverse the genders of that equation for Mia's frowsy mom Joanne — as played by 32-year-old English actor Wareing, she's a study in arrested development, the perpetual hot teenybopper. The one character who appears to have an absolutely clear view of the state of things is li'l sis Tyler, played by another debutante, young Ms. Griffiths. Check back with her in five or six years for Fish Tank II: The Squealquel.
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Post by Admin Wed Jan 27, 2010 6:42 pm

http://www.thisisbrandx.com/2010/01/andy-klein-reviews-fish-tank-swimming-against-the-stream.html

Andy Klein reviews 'Fish Tank': Swimming against the stream
12:32 PM PT, Jan 27 2010

The first thing we hear in "Fish Tank" -- the new feature from British director Andrea Arnold -- is heavy breathing. The sound doesn't necessarily match the action, but it becomes a stylistic motif throughout the film, momentarily bonding us to the point of view of Mia, our protagonist, who is not always the easiest character to identify with . . . or even like.

A 15-year-old malcontent, Mia (Katie Jarvis, a bit older in real life) lives with her mum (Kierston Wareing) and little sister (Rebecca Griffiths) in a shabby public housing project in a dodgy part of Essex, outside London. Mia is a more-than-usually surly teenager . . . way more than usual. She acts contemptuously toward her mother, her sister and her schoolmates. Within the first few sequences, we see her start fights with pretty much everyone she encounters and behave in a variety of obnoxious ways. She seems already destined for a one-way ride to Nowheresville.

The first soft spot she displays is her sympathy for an ancient nag, chained to a post in a vacant lot. Being trapped and on a short leash is a predicament she can identify with. No matter how well-intentioned, her efforts to free him are misguided; unhitched, he will almost certainly come to a bad end. Acting on immediate impulse is the only way she knows to grapple with the real world.

Her miserable life is suddenly jolted when Mum's handsome new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender, barely recognizable from his suave role in "Inglourious Basterds") moves in with them. Mia likes him as much as she can like anybody -- she's brutal even to people she loves -- and he takes a shine to her. What the audience (and a few of the characters) can't quite pin down is whether he's a really great guy with paternal urges . . . or a really untrustworthy guy with romantic or sexual impulses.

Arnold's excellent first feature, "Red Road" (2006), was a kind of thriller (art-house style). At first, "Fish Tank" appears closer to British kitchen-sink realism -- a genre that, with the possible exception of Ken Loach's films, seems long exhausted. Most of the film is shot hand-held, with an almost documentary editing rhythm. But every once in a while, when Mia is particularly focused, either through fear, anger or epiphany, time seems to slow down. Actions are ever so slightly stretched out, and Arnold makes us aware of our breathing, our heartbeats. It's as though she otherwise adheres to a rigorous and austere realism just to set off these occasional expressionistic moments.

In many ways, this is the ugly, lumpen version of last year's "An Education," which has many similar story elements. And, like that film, "Fish Tank" is held together primarily by the central performance. We won't know until her next film whether Jarvis -- a nonprofessional who was "discovered" while having an argument with her boyfriend on a train platform -- is a terrific natural actress or was simply playing a close version of herself.

No one should shy away from "Fish Tank" for fear of some dreary social statement. The realism of the story sets us up for a series of unforeseen (but believable) third-act plot developments, as the danger inherent in Mia's angry relationship to the world becomes all too scary.

--Andy Klein
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Post by Admin Wed Jan 27, 2010 8:22 pm

http://pinatavalentines.blogspot.com/2010/01/review-fish-tank.html

Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Review: Fish Tank

Fish Tank starts as a familiar coming of age tale, but in the middle of the third act bucks convention dramatically. 15 year-old Mia comes from a broken home and lives with her mother and her younger sister, perpetually dishing streams of expletives and insults in their general direction. Things aren't much better outside these four walls, as she bullies other girls and dabbles in illegalities. She harbors secret aspirations of becoming a hip-hop dancer, but all in all, her life sucks, and she knows it.

Everything changes when her mother begins dating the charming Connor (Michael Fassbender). He treats her kindly, supports her dancing, and is everything her life is bereft of. Unsurprisingly, she crushes hard. Her crush is the familiar teenage variety, born from frustration and jealousy. It is all-consuming. She watches him longingly from afar, visits him at work, takes interest in his interests. Everything feels innocuous enough, and you wait for the scene when she awkwardly acts on her feelings and is rebuffed. I'm not going to spoil the movie for you, but that does not happen. The gripping third act is a complete deconstruction of this kind of film, and offers no easy answers.

Director Andrea Arnold does a lot with the typical mumblecore, cinema-verite' style that is popular these days, but stretches it over a tense story arc to keep it from feeling slight and pointless. Many shots are from hand-held cameras, offering Mia's viewpoint from her bed or through a window, observing her subjects from a distance with detached loneliness. You don't blame Mia for feeling attracted to the first person who treats her with dignity, and despite her callous behavior, you pull for her. Like the California Dreamin' cover that plays a large role in the film, Mia's life is quite the winter's day. She is not without her own California dreams, but without knowing the rules of adult life, she chases them in unfortunate ways.
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