Review of Fish Tank (2009) by Sherry L — 05 Mar 2013

Fish Tank, with it's lack of sentimentality, is a pretty coarse and naked brittish indie-movie, which definately is worth it's time.

The movie portrays a 15-year old girl named Mia (Katie Jarvis), during a couple of weeks before she is supposed to be sent to a special school, where the social authorities have arranged a place for her, after she's been kicked out of her old school.

Mia is what you would call a typical "problem child", who is emotionally scarred as a result of being brought up with a mother (played by Kierston Wareing) who is incapable of showing Mia and her younger sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) love or any emotional support at all.

The mother, who's behaving more like a teenager herself, throws wild parties for her friends in the middle of the weeks, meanwhile her daughters are practically banned from the ground floor. During these parties, Mia and Tyler stay on the top floor, and get wasted from bottles of booze they've found.Mia's biggest passion in life is hip hop dancing, in which she spends hours practising and putting together choreographies.

Mia's pessimistic view of life slowly changs when she finally finds a friend in her mother's new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender), the only friend Mia got and feel like she can confide a little in.Despite her very rough language and image, it is clear for us viewers that Mia is not an all bad kid, though she has some bad sides. This gets specially evident when she by a coincidence spots an obviously suffering horse, chained on a yard, which she several times tries to "rescue", despite being threatened by it's owners on several occasions.

What I really like about this movie, is it's tone. It's so "straight-to-the-point" in an almost brutal way, and you never feel like; "oh, it's now I'm supposed to feel sorry for the lead" and so on, even though the whole movie is heavily struck by a low key. The filmmakers leave you up to getting your own opinions and impressions about the characters, which I really appreciate. With no doubt, I can say that Fish Tank was one of my favorite movies from the year 2009.