Reviews and SPOILERS

http://gapersblock.com/ac/2010/02/05/from-paris-with-love-dear-john-frozen-fish-tank-and-the-last-station/

Fish Tank

I got almost the same bitter aftertaste about the world's youth from the British film Fish Tank as I did from Larry Clark's landmark bit of urban horror, Kids. Now, Fish Tank is a much better movie, but that same overriding sense of concern and flat-out dread for the priorities of younger people still burned into my brain after watching this feature from writer-director Andrea Arnold.

In many ways, the plot of Fish Tank parallels some elements of An Education, another recent story of a teen girl falling for an older guy. But the heroine in this film, Mia (played by the extraordinary Katie Jarvis), is growing up under much different circumstances than the bright, well-educated, financially stable girl that Carrie Mulligan portrayed. Fifteen-year-old Mia lives with her younger sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) and her still-young mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing), whose occupation seems to be partying, bringing men home and insulting her children whenever possible. Mia responds in kind by being fiercely disobedient, foul mouthed, and destructive to herself and others. The only thing Mia seems remotely passionate about is dancing, specifically hip-hop dancing, and she's pretty good at it. She has crafted a makeshift rehearsal space in an abandoned building, and spends hours practicing routines and moves.

Her life takes two unexpected changes at the same time. Mom brings home a new boyfriend named Connor (Inglourious Basterds' Michael Fassbender), and Mia finds out about local auditions to become a dancer that specializes in hip-hop, funk, and R&B moves. Connor seems like a righteous dude and seems to genuinely care about Joanne and the girls. He's so respectful and interested in what the family is up to that even the hard-hearted Mia starts to develop a bit of a crush on him. As much of a girl of "the street" as Mia seems to be, we also get a sense from Jarvis' sublimely subtle performance that she doesn't have much in the way of experience with boys. She's got a bit of a thing for a local boy who lives in a trailer with his family, but they mostly just hang out. Mia's feelings for Connor are far more complicated and seem to unleash the hormones to the point where she spies on him and her mother having sex, a thing that both excites and angers her.

Mia's story is one of a girl who has already given up on most of her dreams and hopes of getting out of the life she lives. She's as tough as brick, but there's a clear sense that she wants to be anything but. She often wears her hair in a tight ponytail, but when she lets her hair down, her rough look vanishes and her vulnerability is on full display. Both Connor and the audition add a great deal of anguish and confusion to Mia's life. And trust me when I say that all you'll want for Mia is for something to go right in her life. Fish Tank may be difficult for some to handle on an emotional level, but the journey is worth the frequent heartbreak. The film takes some predictable and not-so-predictable turns in the final act, but even the twists that seem telegraphed from the beginning of the film didn't bother me because the players execute them with such authentic passion. Director Arnold has captured life in all its ugliness and occasional loveliness. Although this film played at many festival last year, I think it's safe to say this is the first truly great movie of 2010. The film opens today at the Music Box Theatre.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020404378.html

MOVIE REVIEW
Movie review: Ann Hornaday on the coming of age film "Fish Tank"

Growing pains: Katie Jarvis as a girl on the cusp of change -- and disaster.

By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 5, 2010

Is "Fish Tank" a movie only a woman could make?

The question has fresh resonance, considering the past year in movies, when female directors -- from mainstream veterans Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers to art house favorites Lynn Shelton and Jane Campion -- made an exceptionally strong showing in theaters. The trend reached its peak, of course, with Queen of the World Kathryn Bigelow, whose visceral, taut military thriller, "The Hurt Locker," earned nine Oscar nominations earlier this week, including one for Bigelow herself for Best Director.

In their range of themes, genres and aesthetics, movies made by women in 2009 finally gave the lie to the notion of "the female perspective," proving that women, like men, can't be reduced to one taste or sensibility.

But now along comes "Fish Tank," by British writer-director Andrea Arnold, which more than any of its sister films offers credence to the notion of the female gaze. The story of a 15-year-old girl named Mia (played by newcomer Katie Jarvis), who lives in a drab Essex housing block with her 30-ish single mother and little sister, "Fish Tank" lives up to its name as an examination of characters trapped in close quarters, trying to survive choppy emotional waters.

As the movie opens, Mia is practicing a hip-hop dance in an empty apartment in her building; she then leaves an angry phone message with an estranged friend before walking in a simmering rage to throw rocks at the girl's window. In those few brief moments, viewers come to know a spiky but vulnerable girl prone to explosive bouts of rage and equally potent moments of deep feeling, such as when she comes upon a tied-up horse in a litter-strewn parking lot and furiously tries to liberate it.

With her razored hair, raccooned eyes and the impulsive, wary energy of a sparring prizefighter, Mia is instantly recognizable as a girl on the verge of everything -- life, sexuality, promise, disaster. But as respectful and sympathetic as Arnold is to her protagonist, that in itself can't be attributed to her gender. After all, one of 2009's most compelling portraits of a girl coming of age in similarly distressing circumstances, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," was directed by a man, Lee Daniels. Even Arnold's extraordinarily sensitive framing and composition -- the unexpected moments of bucolic lyricism she injects into Mia's otherwise gray, disordered world -- reflect an assured, intuitive visual approach shared by male artists (Charles Burnett, David Gordon Green and Gus Van Sant, to name just a few).

Where Arnold's female gaze kicks in is when Mia's mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), brings home a boyfriend named Connor (Michael Fassbender), and the volatile ecology of "Fish Tank" becomes even more roiled. A gentle, protective presence, Connor is the first person in the film to treat Mia with anything approaching tenderness or support.

"You're great," he keeps repeating, and viewers can sense her turning toward him like a parched, dying plant, thirstily absorbing his praise. But it's clear, too, that Mia herself isn't quite sure if she's attracted to him as a father figure or a lover. And Arnold doesn't offer her -- or, by extension, the audience -- any clues.

When Fassbender makes his first entrance, he's shirtless, his chest and lower back seductively presented for Mia and the viewer's admiring consideration. Later, when he's changing clothes while chatting with Mia, Arnold lingers on his body approvingly, charging the moment with frank, disquieting eroticism.

Thus does "Fish Tank" dance on the knife edge of threat and desire, even when Connor seems utterly without guile (in one scene he literally charms the fish right out of the water). What's more, Arnold confronts head-on the fraught relationship between Joanne, who presumably gave birth to Mia while in her teens, and her now-teenage daughter. There are no gabby "Gilmore Girls" bonding sessions in "Fish Tank," nor the polite, unspoken tension between Carey Mulligan's precocious 16-year-old in "An Education" and her tight-lipped mother. Here, Arnold addresses the sexual competition between mother and daughter directly. And she's careful to present Mia not as a sexualized Lolita figure or even the Audrey Hepburnesque mini-adult that Mulligan turned into, but as a girl unsure of her own identity and drowning in mixed messages.

In fact, on its surface, "Fish Tank" is probably most easily compared to "An Education" -- both are stories of teenagers coming of age in Britain under the tutelage of a kind, older man (and, what do you know, the latter was also directed by a woman). But while audiences left "An Education" with the sense of a moral universe restored, Arnold gives no such reassurances. As Mia's story takes its twists and turns, the filmmaker leaves the precise motivations and inner lives of her characters vexingly opaque.

The cumulative effect for viewers is one of profound unease; they're not entirely sure what to make of what they've just seen, quite similar to the ambivalence many felt about Bigelow's apolitical war picture. More than another "Education," "Fish Tank" might be the "Hurt Locker" of troubled, trembling adolescence: tough, explosive, intimate and bruising. Like Bigelow, Arnold is supremely comfortable with her audience's discomfort. Whether their shared gaze is female or not, it's one that doesn't blink.

Fish Tank

* * * 1/2

(122 minutes, at Landmark's E Street Cinema) is not rated. It contains pervasive profanity, sexuality, smoking and teen drinking.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020401428.html

Movie Review: A teenager drowning in misery in the powerful 'Fish Tank'

Teenage wasteland: Newcomer Katie Jarvis makes a big splash in "Fish Tank." (Holly Horner/ifc Films)

By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 5, 2010

At first the title of "Fish Tank" is obscure, relating as it does to a 15-year-old's coming of age in England rather than a literal aquarium.

But as this tough, mesmerizing film takes hold, the metaphor makes itself clear, from director Andrea Arnold's boxlike framing to the impassive but compassionate way she watches her characters swim in their own murky psychological waters.

Teenage Mia (Katie Jarvis) lives with her little sister and her single mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), in a drab housing project in Essex; as "Fish Tank" opens, Mia is in the midst of an argument with her best friend, fighting with her mom and getting away from her troubles by dancing alone in an abandoned flat. Taking a British realist cue from Ken Loach (Wareing coincidentally made her astonishing debut in Loach's "It's a Free World" ), Arnold films the lives of her subjects with fierce, up-close urgency. But Arnold injects her own lyrical touches in "Fish Tank" that make it more poetic than most films of the miserabilist school: amid a gray postindustrial wasteland Mia may come upon a lone horse, for example, or take a wild digression into a lowland worthy of Thomas Hardy.

The plot of "Fish Tank" takes off when Mia's mum brings home an attractive lover named Connor, played by Michael Fassbender with quiet, seductive guilelessness. (Most recently seen in "Inglourious Basterds," Fassbender delivered his own breathtaking breakout performance as Bobby Sands in "Hunger.") Connor, it seems, might finally give Mia the protection and support she has clearly been missing most of her life.

In many ways "Fish Tank" joins "An Education" and "Precious" as an acute, empathic portrait of a girl growing up, but more than those films Arnold leaves viewers with a feeling of unsettled ambiguity.

Jarvis, whom the director reportedly discovered at an Essex train station, is nothing less than a revelation in a performance that is tender, spiky and utterly fearless in its physical and emotional range.

*** 1/2 Not rated. At Landmark's E Street Cinema. Contains profanity, smoking, teen drinking and some sexuality. 122 minutes.

http://www.pitaoe.com/2010/02/henry-saw-fish-tank_05.html

Friday, February 5, 2010
Henry Saw: Fish Tank

It's kind of the "real" version of An Education...and similarly fantastic...

If not better.

Fish Tank is a film about the poorer side of England. I know...it's hard to believe it exists outside of Dickens' novels...but its real. I'm not talking about Guy Richie's Pikies but actual, honest to God, poor English folk.

As my friend Chae put it...this movie is about English trailer trash. Which is not to demean the film, or its characters, but to give you a sense of the film's world. Fish Tank follows a 15 year old girl named Mia who falls for her young mother's 30-something year old boyfriend Connor.

Mia is played Katie Jarvis and Connor is played by Michael Fassbender. They both knock it out of the park. Fassbender (who you might know from 300, Inglourious Basterds, or Hunger) is especially good in a very hard role. Jarvis is strong, always believable, and she sells the last ten minutes of the film especially well.

Fish Tank will leave you upset, and disappointed, but there is something poignant and hopeful about how the movie ends. It's not a flawless film...there are a few overly arty moments, Mia's mom is never fully developed, and the last moment between Mia and Connor felt like it was from a different kind of movie. Still, I was very impressed and moved by Fish Tank. Highly recommended...

Grade: A-

Best Scene: The last scene between Mia and her mother towards the end...

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/02/04/life/0204_fishtank.txt

Stellar acting and directing rise to the top of a very good ‘Fish Tank’

Published: Thursday, February 4, 2010

By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times

http://www.cinefundas.com/2010/02/05/fish-tank-english-movie-review

Fish Tank – English Movie Review
February - 5 - 2010

Mia is 15, all elbows and anger, going at her life in a rundown apartment complex in Essex as if it were one long skirmish in British filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s exceptionally well-crafted drama, “Fish Tank.”

The film features newcomer Katie Jarvis, whom the director first spotted fighting with her boyfriend on a train station platform. The 17-year-old so completely captures the innocence, cynicism and rage of a child of poverty and divorce on the edge of adulthood that it feels as if you are spying on Mia, so achingly real, so tangible does her world seem here.

“Fish Tank” has some of the same strains as “Precious,” the dark fable of a pregnant, abused and obese Harlem teenager, which is now on the Oscar circuit, but it doesn’t have any of the same operatics. Arnold’s style is far more vérité, giving us a precisely rendered look at the experience of growing up in a British housing project, with Mia’s issues emerging out of neglect and ignorance rather than incest and violence. The brilliant power of the film comes from the gritty reality Arnold creates.

The director’s great talent is in telling stories of the underclass and the kind of desperate desire for love and affection that so often comes packaged with that down-market life. She won an Oscar in 2005 for “Wasp,” her short film about a near-broken single mother, then a Cannes Jury Prize in 2006 for her feature “Red Road,” which has a difficult relationship at its center; “Fish Tank” repeated that success at the film festival last spring.

The heart of the story is Mia, forced by circumstance to grow up far too fast. Her 15 years have come with virtually no breaks, in that fish tank of poverty where entire lives are played out swimming in circles. Disappointment piles up like the clutter in the place she lives, decay does the decorating. The fridge is always empty and the couch, and everyone on it, is worn to the bone.

Mia looks like a colt, long-limbed and awkward even inside the loose sweats she wears. So her passion for dancing — a kind of freestyle hip-hop with lots of bump and grind mixed with gangsta poses — comes as a surprise. Tenderness is rare. We see it with an aging horse, chained in a vacant lot, that she wants to set free — a metaphor as telling as it is understated. Mostly, though, Mia is head-butting her way through life — literally and figuratively — alienated from girls her age, dropped out of school and at war with her mom, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), now fading into her late 30s and hoping for that prince to come along, when she’s sober enough to still dream.

It is a highly sexualized world where girls get pregnant early and the cycle of children raising children continues. You see the beginnings in the teenagers hanging around Mia’s apartment complex, where bravado is foreplay and everyone is spoiling for sex or a fight. And you see the second act in the boozy parties Joanne throws, where Mia finds herself witness to what lust and liquor and loneliness can do to virtual strangers.

Arnold, who wrote and directed here, again proves remarkably facile at capturing society’s ills in dramatic form, particularly the treacherous terrain that fatherless teenage girls face. In “Fish Tank,” trouble comes in the form of Joanne’s new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender), all lean muscles and laughter. The problem, or one of them, is that Mia exists in an ecosystem where sex is confused for love all the time.

The relationship between Connor and Mia develops in many ways that you might expect but also in many more that you wouldn’t. Arnold adds new tangles to the web as the story plays out and in the process says much about the prospects for young girls like Mia. She also digs into the ways in which broken families can pretend to be whole again — such as girls tucked in at night and country picnics, things neither Mia nor her younger sister has probably ever experienced, and you see both their hunger for it and the fear of it in Mia’s eyes.

Arnold takes more than a few risks with her characters, willing to let us loathe them as well as love them, depending on the moment, unwilling to make it easy for either us or them.Fassbender, whom you might know from his very funny turn as an undercover agent who’s done in by a bad drink order in “Inglourious Basterds’ ” tavern scene, is excellent at walking that tight-wire of dark possibilities.

Though you can feel the heat of her anger, and the pain of her disappointments, it is the shots of Mia alone that linger. In a scene that runs through the film, she has broken into a boarded-up apartment, its windows overlooking the despair below. It’s where she dances, headphones dangling, moving slowly to music only she can hear. It says everything about her isolation and her still-flickering sense of hope. It is moments like these that leave you as desperate as that 15-year-old to fan that flame.


Cast & Crew:

Genre: Drama

Starring: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing, Harry Treadaway, Charlotte Collins,

Director & Writer: Andrea Arnold

Producer: Kees Kasander

http://www.movieretriever.com/blog/599/movie-review-fish-tank/1703852

February 5, 2010
Movie Review: Fish Tank
Posted by Turk182 in Movie Reviews

Fish Tank is about a girl with so little light or potential for escape in her life that she transforms at even the hint of a feeling she has no idea how to handle – happiness. With a striking, powerful debut from newcomer Katie Jarvis, Andrea Arnold's sophomore feature (she debuted with the equally remarkable Red Road, which is a must-see if you have yet to do so) transcends traditional realism to become something more poetic. In a time when the rise of the female director seems to be the easy headline, you owe it to yourself to find you way to Fish Tank if it makes it to the art house in your hometown. It's spectacular.

In the opening scenes of Fish Tank, 15-year-old Mia (Jarvis) harasses a friend's father, head butts a local girl, tries to break free a horse that she thinks shouldn't be chained, and finally gets home to an angry mother who calls her the c-word. It turns out that her mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) is what would be kindly called negligent. The woman looks barely older than Mia, clearly having had her at roughly the same age as her daughter is now, maybe even younger. Mia and Joanne communicate in the typical language of teenage girls – screaming. Mia drinks whatever she can get her hands on, dreams of a career as a dancer, has been kicked out of school, and generally has no potential route to happiness in sight at all. She will likely get drunk and knocked up like her mother did and end up in her ma's drab shoes in about sixteen years.

Things change for Mia when her mother brings home Connor (Michael Fassbender), a handsome charmer. He seems nice enough and shows actual kindness to Mia. One night after a party, Connor takes a drunken Mia to bed (not in a sexual way, although that's hard to discern for the young girl) and the act of kindness seems to spark something in Mia. The next day when Connor asks the family to go on a pleasant drive to the country, Mia, who would probably have screamed and yelled about her freedom the day before, takes him up on it. Another moment of affection on the trip (a clearly symbolic piggy back ride for a teenage girl who may have never been physically or emotionally supported a day in her life) sets in motion what seemed inevitable from the first time Connor caught Mia dancing in the kitchen. Yes, Connor is significantly older than Mia and if you want to label him a pedophile, I'm not going to argue, but that's not the focus of this piece. As in Red Road, Arnold never judges her characters, merely presents them with all flaws intact.

The second half of the film may not be what people expect, but such is life. Without spoilers, I will say that there is a final act twist that is likely to throw viewers completely for a loop, although I would argue that to claim that a character’s emotional reaction is over-done or not believable is to miss the fact that this person has responded instinctually and sometimes violently through the entire film. Yes, the end of Fish Tank is unusual and darkly upsetting, but the idea to me is that the emotionally devastating choices we make can shoot shrapnel to everyone around us causing a ripple effect. It works for me.

As Carey Mulligan was tasked with holding the somewhat similar coming-of-age drama An Education together, most of the dramatic burden of Fish Tank falls on the shoulders of Jarvis, a non-actor reportedly discovered by Arnold as she was fighting with her boyfriend in a train station. Jarvis is a revelation, perfect in every scene. Unlike a lot of these kinds of pieces, the young girl turns to the older man not out of lust or need, although those elements are certainly there and wildly confused, but out of something closer to instinct, the way a flower would move to light the first time it touched it. Fassbender, who appeared in Inglourious Basterds and Hunger, has quickly risen to the ranks of an actor who makes any project better. He continues to impress every time out. Even Wareing's contribution shouldn't be underappreciated. The whole cast is effective, a praise that goes back to the way Arnold works with actors.

Shot mostly with handheld cameras in unbroken takes and with dialogue that sounds improvised, Fish Tank is that rare drama that feels genuinely and like a work of art at the same time. Isn't that what we mostly go to the movies to see when we pay to see drama? Stories that touch our hearts and minds in a relatable way and in doing so achieve greatness? Fish Tank is a great movie.

Rating: FOUR BONES

Reviewed by Brian Tallerico (MovieRetriever.com Film Critic)

Release Date: February 5th, 2009
Rating: R

Starring: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, and Kierston Wareing
Director: Andrea Arnold
Writer: Andrea Arnold

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0202-fish-tank-20100204,0,7323889.column

3 1/2 stars
Adolescent turmoil seen through a fresh filter in 'Fish Tank'
"Fish Tank"

Michael Phillips Movie critic

February 5, 2010

British writer-director Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank" is a remarkable downer-upper paradox: a bruising tale of teenage resilience, honest and emotionally complicated and alive.

We have been here before, narratively. Mia, a 15-year-old played by newcomer Katie Jarvis, lives with her younger sister (Rebecca Griffiths) and their boozy tart of a mother (blistering Kierston Wareing of the Ken Loach film "It's a Free World …"). Adolescence is like a cage for Mia: She cannot wait to bust out, but she has known too much anger, both from within and without, to know how to flesh out her life and make her own future.

Her primary outlet is dance, and her hip-hop moves do not go unnoticed by her mom's new sometime boyfriend, Connor, played by Michael Fassbender. By introducing this hunky, cryptic object of sexual desire into a too-small apartment already simmering with trouble, "Fish Tank" is recycling familiar material. But as Mia and Connor enter each other's orbits, dangerously, we fear for the girl's health and well-being without feeling that we're being yanked around by the storyteller behind the camera.

Connor represents many things to this combustible family: a little calm, a little stability, someone with better parenting instincts (at least for a while) than the woman he's dating. Then he ventures where he should not. Arnold does not play the exploitation game. She is too fond of her young protagonist to treat her like a piece of plot.

The film slips a bit near the end, when Mia's retaliatory actions (no giveaways here) become more and more risky. I undervalued the picture, though, in its debut last year at the Cannes Film Festival. After Arnold's "Red Road," it seemed a bit tame. But taken on its own clear-eyed and sure-footed terms, Arnold's portrait is very full indeed. When Mia takes her leave of this place, and a situation she can barely comprehend, it's a victory. And the performances from both skilled actors and newcomers alike, under Arnold's free-flowing direction, crackle with the sort of urgency that cannot be faked. The filmmaker's collaborators include editor Nicolas Chaudeurge, who keeps the audience hustling, breathlessly, after Mia's restless adventures, and cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who does nothing to shine up the surroundings. Yet there is light and hope here.

Arnold withheld the script from her actors until only a few days before filming. What she wanted was raw, present-tense electricity among her actors. She got it. With only two full-length films on her resume, Arnold already is one of Britain's bright cinematic lights.

mjphillips@tribune.com

No MPAA rating; cautions for language, sexual material, some violence

Cast: Katie Jarvis (Mia); Kierston Wareing (Joanne); Michael Fassbender (Connor); Rebecca Griffiths (Tyler); Harry Treadaway (Billy)

Credits: Written and directed by Andrea Arnold; produced by Kees Kasander and Nick Laws. An IFC Films release. Running time: 2:02.

http://www.411mania.com/movies/film_reviews/129137

Fish Tank Review
Posted by Erik Luers on 02.05.2010

Rage against the machine..........

Katie Jarvis ... Mia
Michael Fassbender ... Connor
Rebecca Griffiths ... Tyler
Jason Maza ... Liam
Michael Fassbender ... Connor

As I sit here with pen in hand trying to think of enough descriptive words and exuberant praise and hyperboles to thrust upon Andrea Arnold's new film, Fish Tank, I find myself confronted with the urge to just tell you fine folks to stop reading this review, go out, and see it for yourselves. It is, in this newly birthed year, the best film of 2010. This may change, of course, but the film's breathtaking raw power and emotionally charged energy cannot, or better yet, will not. Part urban domestic drama and part coming of age tale, Arnold's film, while not grounded in realism, is a superb case study of tense-filled naturalism, focusing on a pretty fifteen year old girl with more problems than our current American economy. She has been kicked out of school for being rude and violent (that is, when she actually shows up), she has no friends, her mother is an uncaring, neglectful alcoholic, and her future prospects? Less than dim and down in the dumps. She is an angry young woman, crying desperately for attention and lashing out against the ones who try to give it to her. There is one man, however, that will turn out to be different, but oh, what a pity he will become.

Before I get too ahead of myself, let me first identify our young heroine and the remarkably talented girl who plays her. Our character is Mia and the actress embodying her, Katie Jarvis. It's important to make that distinction early on, as one may wind up easily mistaking one for the other. This is an excellent, well versed performance for it captures the emotional brevity of a deeply internalized figure. To get out her buried anger, Mia dances to hip hop music in a small secluded area overlooking her brightly lit, industrialized city. She puts on the loud music, gets into her zone, blocks out the exterior world, and dances ferociously, trying to better herself at the one thing she feels remotely good at. Sometimes, when's she's done, she'll drink herself to dreamland, or go across the street and fight with other rehearsing teen dancers (is she insecure or does she feel excluded? Maybe both). In the real world, she is a loner, but she finds the art of dance immensely therapeutic, and that (barely) helps get her through the day. Could Martha Graham say the same?

Although our story centers around a young, post-pubescent girl, the film is not a “teen movie.” Then again, films that deal with real, believable teen issues wouldn't be fit for that age group to view, anyway (at least according to the MPAA's standards). She is frank and vulgar (do-you-kiss-your-mother-with-that-mouth terms like f&#! and cunt get tossed around like they're going out of style), troubled and confused. When you meet her mother, you may understand why. Arnold presents this maternal figure as drunk and whorish and mentally absent from her children's lives; she's into parties and men and her men are into parties and her, sometimes quite literally. When she brings home a new handsome lad, Connor (played by the ever overachieving Michael Fassbender), we get an uncomfortable, creepy vibe right off the bat. He enjoys watching his girlfriend's daughter dance in her underwear in the kitchen. There's something off about him and immediately our guards are up.

Arnold doesn't take the easy way out however, resisting the opportunity to vilify one character and strengthen the other. Connor may seem a little risque at first, but we warm up to him, however wrongly flirtatious he may sometimes appear to be. He takes his girlfriend and her two daughters, Mia and her insultingly comedic little sister, to a beautiful countryside park/lake. He rolls up his pant legs and heads into the water to try and catch a fish with his bare hands. He asks the women for help, but only Mia agrees to it. Connor then catches a fish as Mia cuts her foot on something in the water. The two other ladies walk off, a little disgusted by the still flopping fish, as Connor cleans Mia's bloodied foot. She notices a tattoo of a woman's name on his body. “Just an ex-girlfriend” he claims. Hmm. He then tells her to jump on his back so that she doesn't further aggravate the cut by walking in the grass. She obliges, and the two seem to bond. The very next scene, involving a CD, a car stereo, and the two dancing playfully in the parking lot, may change that, or perhaps it will do something else. Mia has developed a schoolgirl crush and is embarrassed by it.

Another fairly recent British film, An Education, dealt with a young woman coming into adulthood by starting a relationship with an older man (the hosts of At The Movies compared Fish Tank to both An Education and Precious, two films which do not possess the same gritty power as Arnold's work). Fish Tank digs deeper and more practically than Lone Scherfig's film (although I do not wish to discredit her well acted, sincerely witty drama), becoming more about sexual violation than sexual empowerment. Jenny, the lead in An Education, is a bright girl, well off, and with a head on her shoulders, financially stable parents and a prosperous future ahead of her at Oxford. Mia has no father, no education, no strong household, and no (foreseeable) future. When Jenny starts up a relationship with an older debutante, we feel this sexual rendezvous will run its course and teach Jenny some valuable and commendable life lessons. When Mia's mother starts her sexual escapes with Connor, we feel she is being taken advantage of and exploited; Connor is getting off on screwing neglected street trash. Society has disowned them and left Mia to the blood-thirsty wolves.

Arnold employs her fair share of visual symbolism throughout the film, and one character — nonhuman — sums up the physical confinement which Mia feels within her household. It is a white horse of which I am referring to, chained and trapped in a not so quite abandoned junkyard. The animal, at least through Mia's eyes, is viewed as cold and alone, waiting on the inevitable day of its expiration. Mia tries to break through the chains several times and set the horse free, only to be interrupted by a couple of roughhousing young men. They steal her belongings and try to feel her up. Kicking and screaming, she finally breaks free and runs home — the horse, on the other hand, is not as lucky. With a relationship both spiritual and existential, Mia and the horse share the same sense of entrapment. Sure, Mia can run, but where can she go? And if she were to free the horse, what would she do with it? We are confound by where society places us. Mia finally learns to believe otherwise.

Refraining from giving away any further key elements, let me just say that I think the film takes a turn towards greatness in its final third, when Mia comes across some startling evidence on Connor and takes matters into her own hands. That she is wrong to do so goes without saying, and Arnold shows us a confused, conflicted teenage girl going on instinct and putting innocent people in grave danger. Mia wants to wrong the one who has done her wrong, and in the process is doing further damage to the situation at hand and criminalizing her intentions. The director presents us with very dark material, and her work with actors (especially with a very young one here) is impeccable. In a sense, one can tell Mia regrets her impromptu decision even as she's making it. This sequence allows Fish Tank to morph from a searing drama into a realistically taut nail-biter.

The film is anchored by its two leading performers, Jarvis and Fassbender, and let us hope critics groups remember and recognize them in the Fall of 2010. Jarvis is a very earnest performer with an expressive face and subtle body positioning. Observe the scene where she sits down on the couch with Fassbender after the mother has gone upstairs to bed. Jarvis sits away from him, out of reach of his impending advances. When she moves closer, she looks uncomfortable but not unwilling, and Fassbender is sleazy but freakishly father-like. The two actors handle this unpleasant exchange remarkably well, and this also holds true for an earlier scene in which Fassbender undresses a drunken Jarvis and observes her developing figure. Tough scenes for any actor, but these two commit to them fully and give Fish Tank its depth and backbone. As Arnold reveals hidden secrets about these characters, the film and these performances go even further; a quick, wordless scene in a darkened empty field is tough to watch, with the physical abuse only adding the exclamation point.

Like many urban dramas, the film, shot with handheld shaky-cams, focuses on a troubled youth who is trying to break out and become something better. The movie is not pessimistic, but it does accurately depict the seemingly dead end lives our characters find themselves enclosed in. When Mia goes to her much anticipated dance audition, she comes across a discovery that encourages her to break the cycle and try for something more, but can she given her emotional environment and surroundings? Arnold implies, both visually and narratively, that she can: our final images are of a hopeful woman off to Wales and a balloon floating up towards the sky, away from the confinements of home.


The 411: Yeah, I know, the title, Fish Tank, is a little strange. You may be wondering what it means, what the symbolism is behind it, yadda yadda. No worries. See the movie and contemplate it after the fact. Here's another 2009 Cannes entry you may have missed, and it's a damn good one. Great performances make this one something special, and the direction is amazingly self-assured. It's also available on IFC On Demand (not the ideal way to see these films, but if it isn't playing in your area, it's a great alternative). See the movie, come back, and read what I wrote above. Fish Tank is a highlight.

411 Elite Award
Final Score: 9.0 [ Amazing ]

http://filminsider.blogspot.com/2010/02/fish-tank.html

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
FISH TANK
You are immersed into a world of meanness by the third scene of the movie Fish Tank but that meanness is not earned. I’ve had enough of Mike Leigh’s (“Life is Sweet,” “All or Nothing”) subterranean slum dramas, the last thing I needed was a carbon copy by another filmmaker. This Andrea Arnold film tells the story of Mia (Katie Jarvis), a 15-year old girl living under an irresponsible drunk mother (Kierston Wareing) in a slum area where recreations and activities are limited. Mia has no friends, only an interest in hip-hop. Mia develops a crush on her mother’s boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender).


“Fish Tank” is one of these verité pieces that exist purposely to be as realistic as possible, except the fact there are at least two major developments that are hugely unrealistic. Connor, in the big revelation, has a secondary life pinned to commitments. But no man can pull off sleeping at a girlfriend’s house on consecutive overnight stays, so easily, when he has another domestic home life. It is also too apparent, or transparent, that Connor gets more dialogue-intimate scenes with Mia than the mother he is dating.

Second, a strip club would have seen that Mia is underage and dismissed her before she went on stage. The entire strip club audition is phony, with the filmmaker trying to get you to sigh pitifully at a vulnerable girl stumbling into an exploitation trap.

What makes this film different from say, the emotional powerhouse “Precious” is that film’s director, Lee Daniels, is an enormously empathetic filmmaker who felt he had the need to tell that story. We are getting works by other filmmakers, such as this one of “Fish Tank,” who put out these kinds of movies to show-off their filmmaking skill, to show how “gritty” they can be. “Fish Tank” is preoccupied with throwing obstacles at the heroine in the name of plot cleverness, not empathy.

Also, Arnold is one of these filmmakers who doesn’t know how to use a steady cam. One of the checkpoints of the movie, the big symbolic moment of this girl’s life, is when she drops an audition tape in the mailbox, a symbolically important moment. A true filmmaker would hold the shot on the mailbox, and hold it steady, to underline its significance. Arnold as a filmmaker swerves the camera around and thoughtlessly tracks onto the next “moment,” onto another scene that has less bearing.

That said, Michael Fassbender is one to watch and something can be learned from “Fish Tank” not from the story but of observing his talent. Fassbender, you might remember, played good guy Lt. Archie Hicox who gets a briefing by Mike Myers in “Inglorious Bastereds.” He’s as talented and charismatic as Ewan McGregor, or perhaps a brainier version of Matthew McConaughey.

Go to the official site at http://www.fishtankmovie.com/
Grade: C

http://www.rozhlas.cz/_zprava/687117

Mario Jarý 29/01/2010

Fish Tank - Author: Association of Czech Film Clubs

Ripe new editions 100th Released again delivers images that the film should not miss the gourmet. There is no box-Patoka, or berries from cheap discount for quick consumption. Contrast, in the offer are the best varieties and selections from the film grapes. Frequently, you can expect "heavier" bouquet, but the strong taste and quality. Clear filmmaking. Some images over time is ripe, others have triumphed in its birth. This year Project 100 is compared to previous zemitější, syrovější, darker. We have already presented the film Harold and Maude, this time we choose Fish Tank.

British director Andrea Arnold, in his images reflect the lives of people on the social ladder just to penetrate the highest patrům. Objects of interest located on the outskirts of cities, in the concrete maze of settlements in the "gray" crowd. Whether it is a single mother Zoe from the film Wasp (2003), Oscar-winning film for best short film, or heroine Jackie of Red Road (2006), Arnold is the first feature film, also winning prizes. Trophies of festivals and collected her last film, Fish Tank.

Introductory scene introduces the audience to the British social housing estates, where the bleak situation is just way over the short-term oblivion. Whether it's belief in tempting dreams, which offers television screen and the games on celebrities, and alcohol and sexual intoxication. This covers most of the first teen girls adhering to the concept of career, singer and dancer. Adult television Recalls lost castles, and pulls a gray day alcohol and sex. Process of disillusion and mother passed fifteen Mia, which is more devoted than their daughters večírkům and short-term acquaintances. Incomplete dysfunctional family and the total frustration of the personality of man, who still looks for a place in the world, devastating effects. Either we resist or find "Escape". Mia issue both ways. The constant clashes with its surroundings, having stolen his mother and younger sister to compensate, at times, which can be implemented testing street dance. Her life, however, comes a new stepfather, the events suddenly gain a new direction, a relationship with her mother escalate even more.

Almost banal story torn from the everyday portrayed is highly sensitive, with almost unprecedented level of authenticity. Expression language to get by while filmařskými conventional means. Arnold manipulate the audience, just watching and telling. Does not evaluate its heroes, does not prejudge, let's just "live". The precision of the script (also Arnold) convince our continuous storyline, which finally simple means (I tolikráte best) conjures a powerful drama, the atmosphere of sensitive bird hardly rozdýchá.

Clear authenticity helps camera, which is the main character at every step and be able to get to the point of intimacy. The viewer is witness to the almost intellectual voyeurism. Everything would be little use if the movie "reign" Katie Jarvis Role fifteen Mii. Her insitní speech, nature and temperament gives depth and character content. Equally believable is the role of other "non-actors, Michael Fassbender as well as the role of short stepfather, who was nevertheless some acting experience has (eg, the last shameful bastard).

Fish Tank worth a visit for perhaps only one of the most eloquent and powerful scenes of the film, which plays at the end of sentence "I hate you." with such warmth and love that we from the normal film production nevydolovali or ham. As a paraphrase of the traditional Hollywood speech may sound response Mia: "I love you too." In other words, a person can love their loved ones, even if the "formal" so do not look. And this applies both ways.

Related links: official movie website, ČSFD (flash trailer), Project 100

Fish Tank, United Kingdom, 2009, color, 123 minutes

Written and directed by Andrea Arnold, director of photography, Robbie Ryan, editor: Nicolas Chaudeurge, music: Liz Gallacherová

Cast: Katie Jarvis (Mia), Michael Fassbender (Connor), Rebecca Griffiths (Tyler), Kierston Wareingová (Joanne), Harry Treadaway (Billy)

http://www.dustinchang.com/2010/01/tank-girl.html

Friday, January 8, 2010
Tank Girl
Fish Tank (2009) - Arnold

What a way to start 2010 film viewing! A fifteen year old Mia (played by newcomer Katie Jarvis) lives in an ugly housing project with her young floozy mom and her snappy younger sister. She has to endure typical teen in the rough 'hood stuff- physical fights with other girls, getting hammered, rough boys, a broken home and whatnot. She practices hip-hop dance moves alone in an abandoned apartment room in the hopes of getting somewhere. You can sense the danger when mom's new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender) crashes in their apartment and starts flirting with Mia.

A scottish filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Red Road) has a penchant getting natural acting out of her actors. It's a Shane Meadows film by way of Lynne Ramsay (Rat Catcher, Movern Callar) starring a teenage girl instead of a boy. Well, not quite. Arnold is less interested in social commentary nor lyricism. It's about the characters, their imperfections, their rawness accentuated by Robbie Ryan's full frame, gorgeous cinematography (silhouettes, impeccable framing- he shot Arnold's previous effort Red Road). With little close ups, the framing allows breathing room for actors and audiences.

What I liked the most here, same as in Red Road are the prolonged scenes after pivotal actions, be it sex or emotional experiences- typically they'd cut to the next day or next scene. In Fish Tank, the camera lingers over the scenes to play out, capturing all the unpredictable moments which are just as interesting if not more. It is revealed in Q & A after the show that Arnold didn't give actors the whole script. She fed them little by little on short notice and also a lot was improvised. Indeed, Fish Tank doesn't feel premeditated. The film is both raw and delicate in its presentation and performances. There are a lot of beautiful scenes in the movie but the family dance scene near the end I find most touching without ever being corny. Because of its great teenage actor, Fish Tank resonated much more for me than Red Road. Jarvis's Mia acts tough and is childish. But by the end, we feel she is too smart for the circumstances makes her out to be and remain hopeful for her.
Posted by dustin at 7:55 AM

http://filmswithasideoffrotch.blogspot.com/2010/02/fish-tank.html

Saturday, February 6, 2010
FISH TANK

FISH TANK (British indie film, currently playing the Kendall for all you hip boho-Bostonians) IS f#%@#&! AWESOME.

It's like Hard Candy meets My Summer of Love - it was just so MEAN, and HURTFUL, and STUNNING, and TERRIFYING, and fully, entirely ENGAGING. Seriously, you'll be doing your mind a favor by seeing this. It's the first time in a while that a movie has completely pulled me in and shook me like a f#%@#&! dog.

There's this girl, Mia. She's fifteen but doesn't act it, and she lives in the Harlem of the UK. Her mom is barely thirty and she's an enormous slut; her sister is a little cigg-smoking eight year old. Mia's only escape, besides picking fights with ugly girls, is dancing. AND SHE'S AWESOME. But then in comes Mommy's new boyfriend (the cunning and striking Michael Fassbender of "Inglourious Basterds" fame) to rock the boat. It's one of those movies where it's like, He's cool... or is he?

Everything is surprisingly sensitive -- any scenes that involve any sort of passion is highlighted in a way that I can only compared to The Virgin Suicides; time slows down, and all that is happening in the world ceases except for the heavy breathing of the characters onscreen, with close-ups on their mouths and hands. AND THEN EVERYTHING GETS CRAZY BRUTAL.

See Fish Tank.

http://tcf-fish-finders.com/Movie_Review_A_teenager_drowning_in_misery_in_the_powerful_Fish_Tank

Movie Review: A teenager drowning in misery in the powerful Fish Tank

But as this tough, mesmerizing film takes hold, the metaphor makes itself clear, from director Andrea Arnold"s boxlike framing to the aloof,cool but compassionate method,technique she watches her characters make method,technique through water utilizing arms,legs in their own murky concerning the mind waters.

Teenage Mia (Katie Jarvis) lives with her little female sibling and her single mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), in a drab place of accommodation project in Essex; as "Fish Tank" opens, Mia is in the midst of an argument with her best friend, fighting with her mother and getting away from her troubles by dancing alone in an abandoned flat. Taking a British pragmatist cue from Ken Loach (Wareing coincidentally made her astonishing basic public appearance in Loach"s "It"s a Free World" ), Arnold films the lives of her subjects with fierce, up-close urgency. But Arnold injects her own lyrical touches in "Fish Tank" that make it more poetic than nearly all films of the miserabilist school: amid a silver postindustrial wilderness Mia may happen upon a lone equine species, for example, or take a wild digression inside a lowland honorable,respectable of Thomas Hardy.

The plot of "Fish Tank" takes off when Mia"s mum brings home an attractive lover named Connor, played by Michael Fassbender with quiet, alluring,sexy guilelessness. (Most recently seen in "Inglourious Basterds," Fassbender brought his own breathtaking escape performance as Bobby Sands in "Hunger.") Connor, it seems, might finally give Mia the protection and support she has clearly been missing nearly all of her life.

In a lot,additional,greater,plenty ways "Fish Tank" joins "An Education" and "Precious" as an acute, empathic drawn representation,description of a girl increasing up, but more than the indicated films Arnold leaves viewers with a feeling of unsettled uncertainty of meaning.

Jarvis, whom the director reportedly discovered at an Essex train station, is nothing less than a revelation in a performance that is tender, spiky and utterly fearless in its physical and emotional range.
*** 1/2

Not rated. At Landmark"s E Street Cinema. Contains profanity, smoking, teen drinking and some sexuality. 122 minutes.

http://popcornparadise2010.blogspot.com/2010/02/fish-and-chips.html

Fish and Chips
07/02/2010 00:32
Fish Tank - Andrea Arnold

The first feature length film from Andrea Arnold, and the style and technique seen in her award winning short Wasp is evident. The realistic characters in real settings, living the life of which many people are living right now, it tells the story of a teenage girl struggling to fit in, and using dance as a form of release. Along the way she has fights, Mother issues and of course, stealing said mothers’ new boyfriend. It’s a common occurrence in these types of families. I was surprised not to see an appearance of Danny Dyer in the background. But if they would have cast Dyer in the lead male role, the film would be very different. Michael Fassbender, recognised as the Englishman in Inglorious Basterds, is brilliant here. Shows his true acting chops by pulling this film about chav culture into a heart warming tale of growing up and not always rebelling. He plays the character well giving him a personality of sliminess and general affection for children, and his pushing for their future and career, especially the lead character Mia, played by first time actor Katie Jarvis.

At times in the film, Jarvis plays the role to perfection, capturing that teen angst where she quickly switches from enjoying her time to hating every person in sight, but after a little while, it runs thin, and becomes boring. We all know teenagers can sometimes be emotional swings, but not everyone is like this. Some of her characteristics annoyed me, like her random drinking at ridiculous hours of the day. Seriously, i never did that. The relationship between her and her gobby, smoking little sister was not much of great value because the little sister got to swear and shout a lot. It’s annoying after a little while, but the film does have some touching and funny scenes. It has a mix of both of heartbreak and tenderness wrapped around a working class family, living in a shithole, where dance and relationships seems to be the only release. It’s different to most of the British cinema kitchen sink dramas like Danny Boyle or Shane Meadows films because of its unique style. Harking back to classic British films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, it does show the stereotypical working class family, the drinking, smoking and fighting lifestyle but it gives these characters quirks that have not been seen or used before. It’s a great little British film but hopefully in the DVD release, will get a massive push and sales and people will get to see Andrea Arnold in action.

7/10

Simon Childs

http://judi-mindovermatter.blogspot.com/2010/02/film-review-fish-tank.html

Sunday, February 7, 2010
Film Review: Fish Tank
By the time an American film comes to the theatre, we have usually seen the majority of it through press junkets and movie trailers. In many cases, those are the best parts. That is why I occasionally challenge myself with foreign films and independent films. If you prefer to be cued as to who is the good guy, who is the bad guy, when to laugh, when to cry then this film is not for you. If, however, you can be comfortable with uncertainty and want to see a good film then I recommend Fish Tank.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a 15-year-old who lives in an Essex housing project with her young mother and younger sister. Mia is quite volatile and her love of hip-hop dancing sets her apart from her female friends, who appear to be practicing to be either strippers or NFL cheerleaders (ouch). We are introduced to Mia as someone who is prone to extreme anger followed by moments of surprising tenderness, i.e., a teenager.

When her mother brings home handsome Connor (Michael Fassbender, Inglorious Basterds), Mia's life takes a turn. Connor brings not only a sense of what could be possible stability and love to this family but also a sexual awakening in Mia. Despite the events that ensue, he gives her faith in herself by encouraging her love of hip-hop dancing.

To truly appreciate the beauty in this film, one needs to separate themselves from their American expectations. As the last scene unfolds, the audience gets no hint as to what is to follow for this young girl and we are left to write our own narrative for her. Katie Jarvis gave one of the most believable performances of a 15-year-old I've seen in a long time. Four stars out of five.

Fish Tank is written and directed by Academy Award winner Andrea Arnold and is a Festival de Cannes Jury Prize winner. It can currently be seen in theaters and on OnDemand.

http://www.flickpickmonster.com/2010/02/fish-tank.html

Sunday, February 7, 2010
Fish Tank
"Fish Tank" is one of the best films I've seen from Cannes 2009. It's great 90% of the way through, and even if the ending wasn't extremely satisfying, I think this is a movie you need to see. As someone said, this film does "brim with life," as the camera basically is the character Mia, following behind her and mimicking her motions. The cinematography in this film by Robbie Ryan (save maybe one scene) is amazing in this way and the way it uses the colors it does. The plot is somewhat of the same, showing Mia (Katie Jarvis), who we first see stepping up to go pick a fight with some girls when she's probably drunk and afterwards going to try to free a horse. Her family is ridiculous: her mother is abrasive but mostly drunk, her sister sits around and drinks and smokes with her friends (she's way, way underage for both), and she, Mia, does roughly the same. Her mother sometimes tries to make her go to school, but Mia just runs out of the door, into the world, escaping her clutches. She goes to some other apartment to dance (the only thing she seems to want, as other people said), because her mother would get mad otherwise.

Connor (Michael Fassbender) she runs into at her house (that's the best way to describe it, since all she uses it for is to eat, sleep, and occasionally lie on the couch), and she doesn't like him, probably because it's a change and/or because she's extremely antisocial. He's just some guy, originally. But then things start to get put into motion (a MacGuffin, perhaps) when they go out to some obscure place where Connor catches a fish and Mia gets bitten. Somehow this really ties them together. They were the only two that went into the water of the four (Mia's mother and sister being the other two).

What ensues afterwards isn't perhaps the most satisfying second half of a film I've seen, but, as a friend says, it definitely beats most stuff out today. Another friend put it as "An Education meets Julia" and that's about right. It might not be the most original climax, but, as even all of the film's detractors have been saying, it's still watchable.

Jarvis is good, and there are not any others that come to mind in place of her. Fassbender, as Nick's Flick Picks said, gives a very good performance, one of those that's subtle. You realize, though, that the movie would not be as good without him. Otherwise, I think people suit their parts well. Andrea Arnold has done a fine job with this movie, a film about watching (as is her "Red Road") and about how if you follow certain obsessions too far, you may not like what you see. A-

Contributed by Nick Duval at Sunday, February 07, 2010

http://www.tuftsdaily.com/fish-tank-paints-a-dark-honest-picture-of-teen-angst-1.2142991

‘Fish Tank’ paints a dark, honest picture of teen angst
Movie Review | 3 and a half out of 5 stars

By Lauren Gluck

Published: Monday, February 8, 2010

Updated: Monday, February 8, 2010

“Fish Tank” is not a film for the faint of heart. This dark portrait of a teenage girl growing up in working-class England is harrowing in its brutal honesty. Writer-director Andrea Arnold offers a teen drama that Hollywood doesn’t usually present. Instead of trendy lingo, a hipster soundtrack and a love interest to bring salvation, Arnold presents a harsh dose of real life.

Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis), the protagonist, is the definition of teen angst. She is a 15-year-old mess of a girl who lives with her ever-partying mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) and foul-mouthed younger sister Tyler in a public-housing estate in Essex. Mia is perpetually angry, lonely and insecure.

When we meet Mia, she has just been expelled from school and dumped by her best friend. Her life is an exhausting cycle of humiliation and isolation. Whenever she makes an effort socially, other people do not hesitate to knock her down. On the rare occasion that someone offers Mia a shred of kindness, she lashes out against them and closes herself off in order to preempt the worst.

She sees her life as a prison, a fish tank. She lives in a bleak world in which people tell her what to do and then expect her to fail. In turn, Mia is drawn to the things around her that are also in captivity, such as a sickly-looking horse. Her effort to free the horse from its chains is illustrative of her own imprisonment, and it foreshadows her eventual escape from the life she hates.

Connor (Michael Fassbender), a charming Irishman, moves in with the Williams clan as Joanne’s new boyfriend. To Mia, he is at once a friend, a father figure and an object of sexual attraction. Connor is the only person in Mia’s life -- and perhaps the first ever -- to offer her any positive support.

While Connor ultimately takes advantage of Mia’s vulnerability, their relationship does lead Mia to gradually open up to people. She smiles more and begins a relationship with a boy in her neighborhood. Mia’s slow transformation through her relations with Connor can be seen as beneficial for her; though her dreams are eventually crushed once again, she seeks solace in people rather than self-imposed isolation for the first time in her life.

Jarvis, a newcomer whose own background is similar to that of Mia, is remarkable at expressing Mia’s internal struggles along with her external behavior, such as her guarded smile and her hesitation before lashing out at others. The viewer is well aware that Mia acts out of self-protection, not malice. It would have been easy for Arnold to create a character that is simply mean, but instead, Mia is a fully fleshed-out, yet pitiful, person.

The camera is rarely focused on anyone but Mia, creating a wholly singular perspective of the action in the film. This relentless focus particularly colors Mia’s relationship with Connor as excessive kindness leads to casual flirtation. The inappropriate, yet desired, nature of these events makes the viewer question Mia as a reliable narrator. Through Connor’s eyes, the same scene might be motivated by fatherly impulses rather than sexual ones, but Mia’s sexual attraction to and desire for Connor clouds the viewer’s judgment.

The film eventually answers the question of Connor’s interest in Mia, and it does not come out favorably for him. From that point on, Arnold presents the theme that no one is entirely good or evil. The viewer learns that Connor, temporarily a bright light in Mia’s dark world, has a mean streak a mile long. Mia’s mother, on the other hand, has the capacity to show forgiveness to and affection for her daughters, whereas in the beginning viewers believed her to be unfeeling and indifferent. Mia has the ability to be truly cruel in intention as well as outcome, making even the protagonist a complex, often misunderstood creation.

At the close of “Fish Tank,” Mia’s life is still not perfect. Mia has changed, but the film depicts only one chapter in her life. Arnold’s script and characters illustrate the real world behind the troubled teen and encourages the viewer to look at his or her own struggles.

http://www.moviesummary.net/fish-tank/

Fish Tank

Movie summary of Fish Tank by Michael The Moviegoer.

FISH TANK = ***1/2

“A Great Catch”

“Fish Tank” is one of the best pieces of modern British cinema I have seen in a very long time. Only a few months ago we were all hailing Carey Mulligan as the next great actress from England (Mulligan was just nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for “An Education”). Now, along comes Katie Jarvis and her phenomenal performance as a lonely troubled teen named Mia desperately looking for a way out of her life in a bleak public housing dead-end neighborhood.

But unlike Mulligan, Jarvis is not a trained actor. She was discovered by director Andrea Arnold on a train platform in the same area where this film’s story is set and filmmed. Perhaps this is why “Fish Tank” has a sense of raw realism not usually experienced while watching a movie. We are immediately caught up in Mia’s pain, loneliness and isolation. Like her, we find ourselves searching for a way out only to end up sharing her pessimistic attitude that help is nowhere to be found.

I’ve read many reviews of this film that describe Mia as a girl who is looking for trouble. But the way I interpret it is that trouble comes looking for her. Mia dreams of auditioning as a hip-hop dancer as if that will change her life. In that sense, Mia is oddly reminiscent of Jennifer Beals’ character in 1983’s “Flashdance”. But Mia gets no support from her disapproving mom, and her mom’s boyfriend Connor, played by Michael Fassbender, develops a dangerous crush on Mia.

In a coming-of-age moment for Mia, after spying on Conner and her mom having sex, Mia falls into Connor’s seductive trap. When their relationship abruptly ends, “Fish Tank” shifts gears and becomes a wild psycho thriller that involves Mia kidnapping a little girl. It’s in this film’s second hour that I found myself truly on the edge of my seat.

I’m not quite sure what the film’s title means. This movie is unique in the way that we see everything from Mia’s point of view. Arnold’s camera never strays from this. We never see Mia, or her story, from anyone else’s viewpoint. In a way, for the audience, it’s quite voyeuristic. We’re allowed to look, but unable to touch. Much like looking into a fish tank.

DVD Double Feature: Great movies about troubled teens are not limited to British cinema. 2003’s “Thirteen” is a revealing look at American teens. It’s the portrait of an intense mother-daughter relationship gone sour starring Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood. “Thirteen” was directed by Catherine Hardwicke and the screenplay was written by real teenage co-star Nikki Reed. Despite it’s ‘R’ rating from the idiotic MPAA, this is one of the most important films made about teens that any and every teenager must be allowed to see.

Michael The Moviegoer

http://jcolon7289.blogspot.com/2010/02/trailer-watch-fish-tank.html

Monday, February 8, 2010
Trailer Watch: Fish Tank

The word on Fish Tank is that it is already the best film of 2010 (not that there's been much competition). It won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes, and director Andrea Arnold has already won an Academy Award for her short film Wasp. First-time actress Katie Jarvis is getting beyond fabulous notes for her performance as an angsty teen. Also, the cast has Michael Fassbender (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors after his recent performances in Hunger and Inglourious Basterds). Yeah, there seems to be a lot to get excited about. With the monotony of the recent Oscar nominations (more on that later), I'm already looking forward to the great films of 2010. Fish Tank seems like it may deliver.

http://www.reelnerds.com/2010/02/fish-tank-education-without-education.html

Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Fish Tank - An Education Without An Education
By Aaron
Here's one of those low budget gems that contains a performance so grounded and real, it's hard to believe the young actress at its center has never been in anything before. Fish Tank doesn't have a plot so much as it has a character. That character is Mia, played by Katie Jarvis. She's a 15 year old poverty row delinquent growing up in a housing project somewhere in Britain. Her mother is an unemployed party girl who could care less what Mia and her younger sister, Tyler, get into as long as it doesn't interrupt her fun.

Mia is at war with everything around her. She has a foul mouth and a fouler attitude. Five minutes into the film, she's already cursed out a bunch of sluts having a dance-off on the project's playground, head butted one of them, had the police called on her, and broken into a vacant apartment where she can have a drink and be by herself. She doesn't have a pleasant thing to say to anyone. Most of the time, she doesn't have anything to say at all. She is tall, awkward, and very pretty. She has an idea that she wants to be a dancer, and uses the vacant apartment as a dance studio to practice moves she sees in music videos. But with no one around to point her in the right direction, she is aimless and angry, and headed for trouble.

Then along comes Connor (played by Michael Fassbender), her mother's sexy new boyfriend, and there is instant chemistry between them, even though Connor is pushing 40. At first, Mia curses him out just like all the others. She believes that no one understands her, and her defense mechanism is to spew abusive language, then run. Connor breaks through her defenses by acting as a father figure, encouraging her rather than telling her to f&#! off. He lends her a camera so that she can film her dance routine for an upcoming audition. He takes her and her sister and mother on a drive far out into the country, away from the prison-like confines of the projects, so they can see how beautiful it is if you just get away from the city.

They stop at a lake in the countryside, and a curious thing happens there. Mia and Connor wade into the river, and Connor catches a fish with his hands, and on the way back to shore, Mia cuts her ankle on a rock. Connor bandages it up for her, and gives her a piggy back ride back to the car, and it is while she is this close to him, right there at his neck, that she begins to be attracted to him.

What is great about the film is that you learn all this without being told. There is nothing forced about the progression of the characters. Nothing in the dialogue spells it out for you. We follow Mia through her ordeals, and we feel sympathy for her plight, and for a long time, the relationship between Mia and Connor is balanced on the razor's edge between appropriate and inappropriate, and could have gone either way. He could have been a father figure, or he could have slipped and taken advantage of this naive girl who is unaware of how inappropriate such a relationship is.

The power of the film, and the power of the performances by Jarvis and Fassbender, is in how this relationship is handled. You know it is going to go south, and when it does, you side with Jarvis, and you keep siding with Jarvis even after a third act of astounding sociopathic behavior, because Jarvis's performance is that good. It is as if we are watching a real girl in a real world, and we want her to get out even more than she does, and even after the horrible things that happen to her, and the horrible things that she does, we still empathize with her, because at that point in the movie, she's not a character anymore, she's someone that you know.

http://movies.sophonax.net/?p=108

The Best of 2009 - #10

February 9th, 2010 by Raj Ranade

Coming-of-age stories with unique twists.

Raj:

Fish Tank (dir. by Andrea Arnold, pictured above) - Where the hell did Michael Fassbender come from? Within two years, the man has amassed a filmography full of one brilliant turn after another, from the martyr with psychotic intensity in “Hunger” to the undercover saboteur dripping movie star charm in “Inglourious Basterds”. Fassbender’s complex performance is the best of many good reasons to see Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank” - as a father figure of sorts for the mixed-up young teenage protagonist, Fassbender sketches out a warm and friendly character that has unpleasant secrets and sexual tensions simmering beneath his facade.

Ms. Arnold is no slouch in her filmmaking either - bolstering a trend set up by Bahrani in “Goodbye Solo” and Boden and Fleck in “Sugar”, Arnold harnesses the power of neo-neorealism to get across the brutal reality faced by the young teenage protagonist but adorns it with the occasional explosion of stylized lyricism, particularly in the scenes depicting her tension regarding sexual experience -watch the way that lush and warm colors contribute to otherwise tense compositions and plot occurences. As that protagonist, Katie Jarvis, a non-actor who was reportedly discovered by Arnold while having a fight with a boyfriend in a train station, puts professionals like Carey Mulligan to shame. Indeed, as a moving insightful look at a girl coming of age, this is basically the film that “An Education” should have been.

http://venuszine.com/articles/art_and_culture/film/6575/Teenage_Wasteland

Teenage Wasteland
Andrea Arnold navigates the murky waters of working-class adolescence in Fish Tank

By Bryan Johnson
Published: February 8th, 2010 | 10:15am

Sometimes growing up sucks and sometimes you hate the people you love and sometimes you trust people you shouldn't and sometimes you want to run away and sometimes all you can do is breakdance in a vacant apartment. Such is the life of 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis), the protagonist of Andrea Arnold's moving Fish Tank, which won the 2009 Jury Prize at Cannes. It's a sincere look at the ups and downs of adolescence.

Through Mia's eyes, we see the bleak world she inhabits. She lives in a British housing project with a selfish, often-drunk mother (who we suspect never wanted children in the first place), and a bratty, acid-tongued little sister who provides some comic relief. Most of the action occurs within this oppressive clump of buildings and the immediate surroundings — parking lots, warehouses, and barren fields.

Mia fully occupies these spaces and can't seem to sit still: The camera, shot mostly handheld to an unsettling effect, follows her closely as she walks briskly, jostles around, and works on her choreography (she aspires to be a hip-hop dancer). She knows she's trapped and wants to free herself, but isn't quite sure how. It's quickly evident that her violent temper and prickly façade are defense mechanisms, masking the typical teenage fears, insecurities, and desires she can't quite wrap her head around. When her mother brings home the attractive, playful Connor (Michael Fassbender), things get complicated. Mia lets him assume a fatherly role as she simultaneously develops a crush on him — and his ever-shifting responses add a layer of tension to the story.

The film succeeds on many levels. Arnold's script is wonderfully paced. Nothing feels forced, rushed, or extraneous. Relationships between the finely drawn characters grow or deteriorate realistically over time, and the acting is superb. Fassbender really shines as Connor, a role that comes on the heels of an amazing performance in 2009's Hunger. With quiet control, he plays this character just right, one-upping Peter Saarsgard's turn as David in last year's An Education as a man who may or may not be hiding dubious motives.

However, the real star is Katie Jarvis. Jarvis (who grew up in a similar neighborhood in Essex and became a mother at age 16) was discovered and cast after publicly arguing with her boyfriend on a train platform. Her performance is pretty close to fearless and Hollywood has taken note. She already inked a contract with an agent in the States.

Arnold also deserves to be celebrated. Along with Shane Meadows (Somers Town), this writer/director is calling attention to up-and-comers in British independent cinema, and I thank her for it. Here, she treats each character with love and respect, and stays true to the difficult situations presented without ever resorting to melodrama. She doesn't force emotion onto her audience, refuses to moralize, and poetically captures the everyday struggles of growing up and wanting to be loved. It's what Precious could have been, without the heavy hand and sentimentality.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Two Weeks of Movies Noted
Well - another way too long layoff here at this blog. Can't say I have much excuse for the first week, but then the cable went out over the weekend - that stunk. Though with no TV or internet over the weekend, I watched movies (and Get Smart) instead, which is good. Turning over the Netflix queue, trying anyway... So here's a roundup, bi-weekly, films seen.... Typing is not too successful just now - I have a cut finger, which is annoying me quite a bit, but I am going to grind it out...

Fish Tank: 10/15 - Andrea Arnold's follow up to Red Road... Story of Mia, a 15 year old girl living in a wretched apartment with her wretched mother and ghastly little sister; she wants to be a dancer, she fights with her friends, she tries to save a horse from a family of drifters - misery abounds. Then her mother brings home a new man - Michael Fassbender, looking gorgeous, looking like a cross between Matthew McConaghey during the week or so he was a star and a downscale Heath Ledger... Things happen - she starts hanging around one of the boys with the horse, she gets ready to audition for a club as a dancer, she flirts with the boyfriend... This, needless to say, goes badly. But for all the misery on display, it's not precisely a downer of a film - Mia is too feisty, the actress playing her is riveting, Fassbender comes off as a budding star (as he has in the other films I've seen him in) - Arnold has a good eye, and a tough minded and direct approach to the material. And - as someone said, in a review or article or post somewhere a few months ago, when it was on the festival circuit - Arnold presents an unapologetic vision of female desire in the film. Her characters ogle Fassbender, and so does the camera...

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/screen/Fish-Tank.html

Fish Tank

Kate Jarvis makes a glorious big-screen debut as a tough-as-nails teenager.
By Sean Burns
Posted Feb. 9, 2010

Mama drama: In her maternal role in 'Fish Tank', Kierston Waering is casually abusive to her daughters.

A cockney Precious with the volume turned down, Andrea Arnold’s sparse, deeply moving Fish Tank follows a troubled 15-year-old girl whose only defense is aggression. Wandering around a run-down British housing project that seems to be located in the middle of nowhere, Mia (Kate Jarvis) lashes out at everybody around her with a barrage of profane slurs and head-butts. She secretly practices dancing in an abandoned apartment upstairs, but such self-expression and childish dreams have no place in this grim, poverty-stricken wasteland. Whether on the streets or in her miserable home, Mia wears a suit of furious armor.

You can’t blame her, really. Mom (Kierston Waering) is a boozy, casually abusive party girl who won’t grow up. Her little sister (Rebecca Griffiths) smokes cigarettes and curses like a sailor. Mia can’t even visit a starving horse chained up at the junkyard down the block without almost getting raped, and in these early stages Fish Tank feels like it may become almost too oppressive to bear.

Then we meet Mom’s new boyfriend Connor. A shifty, charming lout played with a quiet strain of delicacy by the fantastic Michael Fassbender, he’s the first person to show Mia any affection, or even any respect for that matter. He might as well be from another planet, taking these three ladies out for a drive to the seaside. Connor catches a fish while Mia stares in wonder, as if seeing a universe beyond those dreary walls for the very first time. (Meanwhile, Mom just wants to go to the pub.)

Much of Fish Tank feels like an accident waiting to happen, with Mia’s confused, burgeoning sexuality drifting slowly toward Connor’s slightly suspect attention. He encourages her to pursue her dancing, and laughs off her reflexive insults. There’s a palpable connection that’s more than a little bit queasy, and if nothing else, the film shows up the glossy, empty lies of An Education , which shares several key plot developments, albeit handled in startlingly different ways.

Working in a rough-hewn, matter-of-fact style similar to that of Ken Loach, Arnold has a knack for just hanging back and letting her scenes breathe. It’s the right choice, as there’s no point in emphasizing the hopelessness of Mia’s surroundings. (We don’t need another Precious , thank you very much.) She does however, have an unfortunate weakness for on-the-nose nature symbolism, and if there’s an animal anywhere onscreen during Fish Tank , the corresponding metaphor is guaranteed to be a groaner.

In a casting story that sounds too good to be true, they say Kate Jarvis was discovered by the director while having a screaming match with her boyfriend on a train platform. If so, it’s a miracle performance from a non-actor. Mia is prematurely hardened, yet we can always see the waves of roiling vulnerability that her anger tries to disguise. Fassbender, who delivered two completely unrecognizable turns last year—first as starving Irish martyr Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger , then the dashing film-critic-turned-spy in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds —is proving to be quite the minimalistic chameleon. Connor should by all rights come off as reptilian, but Fassbender plays him more confused than conniving. He’s the most helpless sexual predator I’ve ever seen in a movie.

As long as she keeps away from the overwrought fish and horses, Arnold’s work is quietly devastating. She keeps the camera close to Jarvis, shooting from POV angles whenever possible. There’s no outside perspective or authorial distance imposed on the material; Fish Tank is as close as we can get to seeing this grim world through Mia’s own eyes. The stray glimpses of humanity shine brighter this way, as when Mom (a shrieking harridan who casually informs her daughter that she was almost aborted) wordlessly reaches for a connection. For a brief, shattering moment this ravaged family is reunited, dancing in the kitchen. How sadly appropriate then, that their song is Nas’ “Life’s A Bitch (Then You Die).” B+

http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2010/01/fish-tank-wisdom-in-a-teenager/

FISH TANK: wisdom in a teenager
January 20th, 2010 by Annie and Lisa

One of the more interesting characters on the screen right now is the angry, vulnerable and directionless Mia (Katie Jarvis) in the British film FISH TANK, directed by Andrea Arnold (currently screening at IFC Center). A 15 year old girl clothed in baggy sweat suits, Mia spends her free time drinking liquor and practicing awkward dance moves by herself. She’s looking for expression and it spills out through her rage as she tumbles through mistakes and near scrapes with disaster with a kind of tough resilience that would make you want to hug her… if you weren’t worried about her breaking your nose.

The story focuses on Mia’s discovery of a much needed father figure in her mother’s new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender). Connor is kind to her and takes an interest that seems genuine at first until their relationship begins to move into uncomfortable territory and they have sex. When he disappears, Mia goes after him with the kind of zeal that would put most stalkers to shame. Without spoiling it, let’s just say things go very wrong but they could have been much much worse. Many filmmakers would have been tempted to go for the darkest moment possible, to give the story more weight and finality, but instead we are left at the end with the skillful balance of a little hope and a huge collective sigh of relief, without it feeling sticky or contrived.

As I walked out of the theater I kept thinking that these are the stories that we never hear about…. that happen all the time. These are the stories where right before someone’s life is about to hurtle sensationally off a cliff, they hit the brakes and turn around awkwardly. Bruised and embarrassed, ashamed and angry, and a bit wiser, they try to find a new path. This film has the wisdom born of real life.