Fish Tank

‘Fish Tank’ is one of those ‘kitchen sink’ dramas, a bit like the ones Shane Meadows or Mike Leigh like to make, complete with hand-held camera work. This one is set somewhere on the urban wasteland of a housing estate in Essex and is rather good, if you like the sort of gritty drama where everyone and everything is on a downward spiral.



Fifteen-year-old Mia (played with aplomb by a total newcomer Katie Jarvis) has been kicked out of school, we don’t know precisely why but we guess Mia is no good. This is drummed into us early on, in a blur of scenes around the estate. She’s your typical stroppy teenager but with added anger and extra lip. She’s a bit of a loner and seems to be purely biding her time until her mother packs her off into care. She spends her days drinking and practising dance moves in the empty flat upstairs, a flat that she’s broken into. She scowls at the other kids in the street, she thinks she’s better than them, both at life and at dancing. But is she?



The mother (Kierston Wareing), like her Daughter, often has a bottle in her hand. She has clearly failed Mia and herself, consequently there doesn’t seem to be much love between them and certainly no sign of any parenting. At times she seems less mature than her Daughter, as she trowels on the make-up, dons the bleach blonde look and goes in search of conquests down the local pub.

One such conquest, an Irish bit of charm called Connor (Michael Fassbender), wander out of her mother’s bedroom into their kitchen one morning and crosses swords with Mia. Mia puts the barriers up but there’s an immediate, if uneasy, magnetism between them, which is clearly going to lead to one thing. Like a lot of the film, you are unsurprised at what happens but all the same gripped by the journey there.



The film makes you wait for each outcome and tension builds every time Mia and Connor are on screen together. Mia visits him at work, asks his advice when she gets an audition at a dubious local club and spies on him in action in her mother’s bedroom. We don’t know where Mia’s father is in all this. Is Connor perhaps a similar ‘father figure’ that she couldn't help but be drawn to? Things are not always explained, this is not an A to B plot film.

Then one night all three of them are the worse for the alcohol and, with the mother conveniently crashed out, the inevitable happens. After which it all blows up and he returns to his real family. Yep, he has a wife and Daughter elsewhere. Mia follows him and what follows is an uneasy kidnap scene as she absconds with and nearly drowns (accidentally) his young daughter.



The film is fleshed out with a sub-plot about a local gipsy (Harry Treadaway) and his white horse, with whom Mia eventually runs off into the sunset. That’s the lad, not the horse. Although she tried that as well. Then there's her sister, the equally neglected, Tyler, who provides some light entertainment with some great lines.

I assume the title, ‘Fish Tank’, implies that we are looking in at their lives but it could equally apply to Mia, being on the inside, looking out, and longing for something different.

The characterisation is terrific, believable, and the acting equally so. The film is always interesting and edgy with it. Katie Jarvis turns in an excellent performances but all the cast are excellent.