Fish Tank

Mia, played by the mesmerizing Katie Jarvis, is a typical teenager: caught in a state of acute rage and chronic vulnerability. She has dreams, realizable desires that afford her a shining optimism and penetrate the bleak suburban landscape: freeing a beautiful, gaunt, chained mare; freeing her soul in the corporeality of modern dance; freeing her untrammeled desires through intimacy – paternal or sexual. Fish Tank is an extraordinary, touching, melancholic film in which Andrea Arnold executes some harder tropes of social-realism with honest optimism whilst never resorting to sentimentality or cliché. Claustrophobic interiors throw the urban surroundings into relief, much as Arnold’s intense portrait transforms Mia's world into the landscape. A fascinating relationship with her mother’s boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender) carries narrative momentum and intense emotional charge and we are invested in this seething, simmering explosion. Fish Tank would be tragic, were it not for the dignity in Mia’s optimistic resignation to life’s disappointments. Unmissable.