FISH TANK directed by Andrea Arnold (UK, 2009)
Andrea Arnold’s bold debut movie was about a CCTV operator in Glasgow and in a strange way her brilliant follow up ,Fish Tank, is also about surveillance. Yet, while in Red Road the woman was on the outside looking in, the teenage protagonist of Fish Tank is on the inside looking out.
Mia is 15 and her life on a council estate in Essex is about as interesting and varied as that of a goldfish. Money is tight but the flat where she lives with her mother and younger sister, Tyler, is decent enough; above all, hers is a poverty of the soul.
Her mom is more interested in partying than parenting so Mia and Tyler have become pretty wild and unruly. Like many kids of this age (and I speak from experience as the father of a girl around the same age) Mia is emotionally confused and desperately needs to find a way out of what she perceives as a boring, dead-end existence.
School offers nothing and she is on the point of being expelled. You could say that she doesn’t do a lot to help make things better. She’s on the defensive even before she is directly criticised and gets violent and/or foul mouthed when crossed. Yet, her streetwise bearing and combative behaviour is mostly just a front.
Katie Jarvis got the part as Mia when a casting agent saw her having a row with her boyfriend at Tilbury railway station (one of the locations in the movie). She was cast for her attitude rather her acting experience; a risk that could easily have backfired but doesn’t as she manages to pull off the difficult feat of looking scary and sassy while also convincing us of her vulnerability. Continue reading
