michaelcollinsucl's blog

A review of Fish Tank, directed by Andrea Arnold (2009)

One of the reassuring constants of contemporary culture is the enduring fondness of filmmakers in the UK for the realism and moral seriousness of the British New Wave. Perhaps what makes Andrea Arnold's work so arresting is not simply that it represents excellence in this field, but that the ‘angry young men' of the 1950s and 1960s are here replaced by an angry woman.

Fish Tank has many affinities with Arnold's 2006 Red Road, not least her choice of the rundown social housing estate as the lab bench upon which she dissects the putrid entrails of our post-Thatcherite society. By way of corrective treatment for their pathologies, the entire political class should be strapped down in cinema seats - A Clockwork Orange style - and forced to watch this film again and again until they admit that neither Labour nor Conservative parties have been able to address the squalid human existence that the film depicts. Fish Tank suggests that the ‘broken Britain' debate framed as Labour v. Conservative is too simplistic.

The film opens with Mia, Fish Tank's 15-year-old protagonist (played by Katie Jarvis, famously talent-spotted whilst arguing with her boyfriend at Tilbury railway station) aimlessly wandering around her estate, until she comes across a group of young girls performing a dance routine. We soon learn that Mia herself has aspirations to become a dancer, which helps us make some sense of why Mia feels compelled to make derogatory remarks about the girls and their dance moves. When one of the girls challenges her over this, Mia head-butts her, breaking her nose. Mia arrives back in her flat to find that her mother - who from her age and style of dress one immediately assumes is her elder sister - has caught wind of this development. The violent and expletive-laden interaction between the two sets the tone for their relationship.