British filmmaker Andrea Arnold follows up her 2006 art-house hit “Red Road” with another look at the lower middle classes, “Fish Tank.”
The heroine of the first film was a woman who toiled behind a spy-camera monitor in a tough part of Glasgow.
“Fish Tank” takes place in a grim housing project near London that is home to Mia, a volatile, foulmouthed 15-year-old outsider who isn’t averse to head-butting another girl.
She lives with her mother and little sister and isn’t very happy, except perhaps when she’s dancing to hip-hop in an abandoned flat.
At first, Mia’s upset when Mum’s new boyfriend moves into their apartment. But Mia finds herself attracted to the handsome stranger, probably because he’s one of the few people who treats her with kindness.
Arnold, who also scripted, has a fine grasp of this kind of life. (Comparisons to Mike Leigh and Ken Loach are appropriate.)
As Mia, first-timer Katie Jarvis gives a realistic and sensitive performance, perhaps drawing on her own life. The filmmaker discovered her arguing with her boyfriend on a train platform, and despite her inexperience she seems at ease in front of the camera. It’s a star-making performance if ever there was one.
Michael Fassbender, who won praise as IRA martyr Bobby Sands in “Hunger” and an anti-Nazi fighter in “Inglourious Basterds,” is a presence here, too, as the mysterious boyfriend, who isn’t what he at first seems.
Kierston Wareing and Rebecca Griffiths acquit themselves handsomely as the mother and the younger sister, respectively.
“Fish Tank” is grim, to be sure, but it leaves us with a feeling of hopefulness.