Fish Tank
On paper, Fish Tank looks as if it will be one of those worthy British films that critics fawn over whilst also leaving the majority of the film-viewing public somewhat cold.

On paper, Fish Tank looks as if it will be one of those worthy British films that critics fawn over whilst also leaving the majority of the film-viewing public somewhat cold. Andrea Arnold, who wrote and directed this feature, has said that she finds the work of Ken Loach inspiring; she even borrowed one of his casting tactics in employing a non-actor in a lead role. Perhaps I’m wary as a result of watching Loach’s horribly depressing 2002 social awareness film Sweet Sixteen, in which a Scottish teenager living on a council estate is predictably unable to escape a miserable fate. Since Fish Tank can be described as a film about an Essex teenager living on a council estate in only marginally merrier circumstances, I don’t think my apprehension prior to seeing it was too misplaced.

Happily, Fish Tank is not your usual relentlessly ‘gritty’ fare. In it, teenagers are allowed to be funny as well as obnoxious, and foul-mouthed tweens are almost as endearing as they are symbolic of a morally bankrupt society. We follow Mia (played by Katie Jarvis, the teen plucked from obscurity), a moody fifteen year old who prefers Glaswegian kisses to the French kind and spends her time trying to steal off the local travellers. At home on the estate, Mia spars with her reluctant mother Joanna, who gives her two daughters little more than an encyclopaedic knowledge of swearing and a palpable sense of being in the way.

Mia’s hostility to the world in general is interrupted unexpectedly by the arrival of her mother’s latest boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender). From the minute he strolls shirtless into the kitchen, Connor exudes a charismatic self-confidence that piques insecure Mia’s curiosity. He quickly integrates himself into the family, adopting a quasi-fatherly role towards Joanna’s daughters that both girls evidently crave. The clash between Connor’s happy-go-lucky ways and the family’s cynical negativity results in comic scenes which win the audience’s attention, as well as Mia’s affection. Amid all the laughter and sunshine, however, tensions begin to develop. Just how fatherly/daughterly is the relationship between Mia and Connor? At what point does a thirty-something man go from being paternal to being…less admirable? The film is always shot from Mia’s perspective, and the audience remains as clueless as she does throughout the narrative. I found myself wondering, is it unfair to assume the worst of a man simply because of an apparently innocent tendency to mix intimacy in with kindly solicitude?

The acting was uniformly brilliant, and Fassbender in particular stood out, due to his deft handling of a morally ambiguous character. I came away from Fish Tank feeling that Arnold had succeeded in bringing warmth and complexity to the traditionally harrowing template that films made in Britain often adhere to. Fish Tank is proof that British films can address serious issues and offer laugh-out-loud moments, all without resorting to Richard Curtis’s tried-‘n’-tired posh dimwits formulae. As such, it is a revelation. Andrea Arnold’s skill at producing such a satisfyingly tragic-comic work makes her, in my eyes, perhaps the only peer to Danny Boyle in the UK film industry. And having seen just how well Boyle’s style of filmmaking translates across the world, I can think of no higher accolade!

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