TANK TOP

Andrea Arnold’s true grit…

Sometimes even the best-intended critical comparisons can rankle. On Friday The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw strongly opined that Andrea Arnold, on the back of her second feature Fish Tank, could be a natural successor to Ken Loach – a huge compliment, yet a heavy mantle for any filmmaker to carry. And while Arnold shares Loach’s essential premise of telling tales that resonate with real life, with fully-rounded characters and naturalistic (and necessarily profane) dialogue, it would do this clearly talented auteur a real disservice to be boxed off so neatly at such a nascent stage.

Set in an unprepossessing sink estate in Romford, Fish Tank centres around the triangular fortunes of 15-year-old Mia (a startling tour de force from new find Katie Jarvis), her boozy and bruised single mother (Kierston Wareing) and the sudden arrival of the latter’s new boyfriend Connor (a fully nuanced turn from Michael Fassbender, last seen at his shit-kicking best as Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s incredible Hunger).

Mia is in the full throes of a troubled adolescence – violently alienated from her peers and at odds with her mother who seems resentful of her blooming youth as her own looks crack and fade – and finds her only solace through two litre bottles of cheap cider and a deep immersion in freeform dance. Connor’s arrival in their small flat startles her from the start. “You dance like a black,” he says, the air thick with tension, after catching Mia busting moves in the kitchen. “I mean it as a compliment”. Stunned by the backhanded big-up, Mia is unable to respond with anything other than teenage insouciance, but some sort of marker of what’s to follow has been set, and the viewer’s never quite sure whether Connor’s genuine interest in Mia is purely patriarchal or something far more prurient.  

Initially it seems the former as ‘the family’ – completed by younger daughter Tyler (a fantastically feisty turn from Rebecca Griffiths) – attempt a first outing together; all the way to a remote, muddied lake. Connor wades into the water, and with Mia’s help, miraculously pulls out a large perch that he ceremonially kills with a stick. Mia gashes her foot on a rock in the process and the interplay between her and Connor is terribly taut and tender. Tellingly, the fish – their intended supper – never makes it to the plate as alcohol – a constant factor in the film’s myriad unravellings – unsticks Connor’s best laid plans.

I could go on, but any more would spoil this real treat from a clearly burgeoning talent – not least as a screenwriter with a firm footing in everyday dialogue, something much harder and challenging to pull off convincingly than any fat tract of goblins and gremlins gobbledygook. Characters that might have been archetypes and stereotypes in less capable hands become fully fleshed – flush with foibles, flawed, and awash with a fury of conflicting emotions when pushed too far.

As with Arnold’s debut, Red Road, and as with Loach, there will inevitably be some naysayers waving their ‘It’s all so bleak’ placards and protesting about the hand-held camera work and partially hip-hop soundtrack being, respectively, visual and audio shorthand for documentary realism. Let them moan. Yet Fish Tank is far more life affirming than its premise suggests: Mia and her mother attempting an unlikely rapprochement at the close – though in the least schmaltzy way imaginable. It’s sterling stuff, ya ken?