Fish Tank

Review

The young British actress Kate Jarvis is in nearly every shot of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, and her wide face, soft eyes, and flickering mixture of longing and potty-mouthed defiance draw you in and keep you guessing over what she’ll do next. As Mia, a 15-year-old who lives with her nasty little sister and self-centered single mother in a housing project, she’s high-strung and endlessly reactive, with a slightly feral quality. Early on, Mia hunts down a pal who dropped her, then promptly head-butts a girl who calls her skanky and breaks her nose. As she stomps away, you can feel her insides churn over her loss of control, and Arnold’s handheld camera is both on her and with her, the emotion in every jitter and swerve. Alone in a vacant apartment, Mia practices hip-hop to her portable CD player and tiny speakers, then gazes through the window at the world outside. Her dancing helps to channel her feelings, but despite big dreams she’s no Billy Elliot, and her accent and snaggly English teeth remind you where she comes from and what she’s up against. It’s her energy, her attack that convinces you she won’t go down without a fight.

Arnold’s first feature, Red Road (2006), centers on another outsider, a woman who monitors security cameras. The film is formally brilliant, but it doesn’t have the breathtaking openness of Fish Tank. Michael Fassbender plays her mom’s handsome new boyfriend, Connor, who encourages Mia’s dancing and gazes on her with sympathy and affection. Also with sexual hunger: When Mia pretends to be asleep, Connor carries her to her bed, and Arnold slows down and eroticizes the moment. When he leaves and her eyes open, you see she’s more aroused than he is. Fassbender’s Connor is never as nakedly manipulative as Peter Sarsgaard’s predatory Jew in the overrated An Education. When Connor yields to temptation, his first reaction is shame and fear; he sees the bottom fall out of his life.

Near the end, Mia is overcome with hate and on impulse does something shocking, nearly unforgivable. The sequence goes just to the verge of tragedy, but Arnold is too compassionate to deliver the ultimate blow. The final scenes have a transcendent mixture of hope and sadness. I’ve never seen anything like Mia’s final dance, or the leave-taking with her little sister that follows. In Fish Tank, nothing goes right, yet Mia’s fate never seems preordained. Her constant motion might or might not be her salvation, but it keeps you in suspense until the last frame�and beyond. — David Edelstein

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New York Magazine Reviews

• David Edelstein's Full Review (1/18/10)