‘Fish Tank‘, written and directed in 2009 by Andrea Arnold, is one of the most interesting social films I’ve seen lately. Combining the techniques of fiction and documentary films, it owes its freshness and sincerity to the fact that it is directly inspired and made in the neighborhoods and social media it describes, many of the actors, including the protagonist of the film, being amateurs, at their first appearance on screens. While watching this film that deals with the disadvantaged environments of the English society and uses minimalist techniques that are not different from those of the films of the New Romanian Wave from the first decade of the 21st century, I was thinking that if it were a Romanian film, many of the Romanian commentators would have exclaimed: ‘another filthy film, made for festivals, which presents our society in a bad light!’. It seems that British filmmakers do not hesitate to frontally face such problems, Andrea Arnold continuing here a tradition that starts from the cinema of the ’60s and continues until Ken Loach or Mike Leigh.
Mia is 15 years old and is living a difficult adolescence in a slum with a needy population in an English city. She dropped out or was expelled from school and is to be sent to a special school for ‘difficult students’. Her mother raises her and her little sister alone. In fact, it would be fairer to say that the girls grow up in their mother’s house, as she is also quite young and more concerned with drinking and partying. Mia is a lonely teen, she hardly makes friends of her age, begins to be tempted by alcohol, tests the limits of what is permissible and trespasses them often. She is not a bad girl, but life does not seem to have given her many chances, communication with others including frequent outbursts of violence. The only positive way to release pressure and express herself is dance, of course a hip-hop variant. The only one around her who encourages her in this direction is her mother’s lover, who moves in with them for a while. But this relationship has problems of its own.
The whole movie is told from Mia’s point of view, which means that the young actress Katie Jarvis is present in every scene. When the film was made, Katie Jarvis was 18 years old and had never acted. Andrea Arnold discovered her in a train station, where one of the key scenes in the film was filmed, and noticed her while … she was arguing with her boyfriend, much like she often does in ‘Fish Tank ‘. The talent and beauty of the actress, together with the freshness and naturalness that characterizes her, make Mia a character with whom it is difficult not to empathize as a spectator, although I do not think you would want to meet her in real life. The other notable acting performance belongs to Michael Fassbender, the only known actor and recognizable figure in the film. Mia and many of the other characters in the film are permanently on the edge of the abyss, another wrong step or a dose of misfortune can irreversibly destroy their lives. They always seem to have one not so bad alternative and many very bad ones. And yet, in the end, they manage to survive and continue on a path that gives them more chances, despite the indifference of the system and the wickedness of the world around them. Paradoxically, this film about the coming to age of a teen girl in a cruel world, manages to end with a note of hope.