Fish Tank   Starring: Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender Artificial Eye RRP: £15.99 ART470DVD Certificate: 15 Available 25 January 2010

Mia’s life seems to be going nowhere. Living on an estate with her mother, with whom she clashes, and her younger sister, a minor cider drinking, cursing, firebrands herself. Her frustration with her life brings her into conflict with all around her, fighting with girls, bunking off school. Her life changes when her mother brings home her new boyfriend, the first man in her life who has paid her any attention, but Mia’s feeling for him are confused, until one night when seduction becomes coercion...

Fish Tank (2009 - 1 hr, 57 min, 58 sec) is a gritty drama from writer/director Andrea Arnold. The film won nine awards and was nominated for a further sixteen.

Fish Tank is in the long line of independent films which concentrate on the poorer section of society, a genre made famous by the films of Ken Loach. It would have been pretty easy to make a film about how awful it is to live on a council estate with few dreams and fewer hopes for the future and many films like this exist. Thankfully Fish Tank is about so much more. Arnold takes time to point out that even in these circumstances there are always elements of beauty and happiness to be had, whether that is the simple act of dancing barefoot in a car park, or the love of a younger sister.

The film is really an examination of growing female sexuality. Mia has hormonal explosives running through her veins, stuck in the unenviable time between childhood and womanhood. Her only escape from the mood swings and resentments which colour most of her relationships is to break into an empty flat to practice her dancing, dreaming that her scant talent may be a way out of her life.

Mia is played brilliantly by newcomer Katie Jarvis, who was literally plucked from the streets to play the role. I have no idea how much of her own life she injected into Mia, but her performance is utterly convincing. This is helped by Arnold’s choice to shoot much of the film from Mia’s perspective, making it almost impossible for the audience not to put themselves in her place. Although the character is not wholly likeable, you do find that eventually your sympathies definitely lie with the central character.

Mia’s relationship with her mother is more akin to squabbling siblings, Joanne (Kierston Wareing) spends most of her time being a mother only in name, leaving little space, in her life, for her to support either of her daughters, including twelve year old Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) who spends her time smoking and drinking cider.

Life changes when Connor (Michael Fassbender) enters their lives, initially Mia is sceptical and antagonistic towards Connor, but the attention he pays her soon turns to burgeoning sexual feelings in Mia. Connor is friendly, smooth, and through most of the film the audience is never sure whether the attention he gives to Mia is fatherly or not.

One night an event occurs which changes their lives for good, What I could not reconcile, with what followed, was, having been betrayed, Mia extracts her revenge, but from everything that we have learned about this character so far the manner of her revenge did not seem in character and it lost Mia some amount of sympathy.

I cannot comment on the finished DVD, as the disc supplied had on the film on a DVD-R, the PR sheet promises a copy of the award winning short WASP, but nothing else.

This is not an easy film to watch, but Jarvis’s performance will have you captivated. So, if you like a slice of kitchen sink drama, I think you’ll find much to enjoy here.

8

Charles Packer