Fish Tank (2009)

Genre

Drama

Director

Andrea Arnold

Country

UK

Cast

Katie Jarvis, Kierston Wareing, Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Griffiths, Harry Treadaway, Sidney Mary Nash, Sarah Bayes

Storyline

The life of Mia (Katie Jarvis), an aggressive fifteen-year-old girl, chances as she begins an uneasy friendship with her mother's (Kierston Wareing) boyfriend (Michael Fassbender).

Opinion

I'm not going to lie, this film ended up on my watchlist a long time ago because of Michael Fassbender. Then it popped out here, the story sounded quite interesting and I decided to watch it, but it was a bit of a disappointment.

Uncomfortably realistic and with the potential to be a great coming-of-age flick, "Fish Tank" unfortunately never really takes off.

What I liked about the film is that the familiar storyline unravels into a quite original story that allows us to witness the growth of the character, this angry 15-year-old girl, and how well Andrea Arnold avoided the kitchen-sink drama, excessive violence, pregnancies and all the other clichés of the genre. Also I did appreciate the lack of an uplifting message.

The problem with that is the execution. The film is just too slow - it could have easily been 30 minutes shorter and the story would have lost nothing - and the first part, even though the film started off pretty good, turned out to be nothing but a tedious picture of a girl walking around, swearing at people, and trying to dance. A little of that would have done amazing to get us to know the character better, but enough is enough.

Another flaw is the role dance has in the story. I was really expecting it to have a more important role than just being a way to lengthen the film with endless dancing sequences.

However, Andrea Arnold sure is interested in giving genuine portrayal of real life, and she shows that through a quite good character study - the hand-held camera gives the film a more intimate feeling -, and she does a good job directing the cast, especially Katie Jarvis who, according to Arnold herself, just played herself.