Fish Tank

***½

A progressively absorbing, immaculately crafted variation on the familiar foul-mouthed miserabilist kitchen-sink riff.

Fish Tank brings to mind other movies with a girl right in the heart and pit of a slum- Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire was another from this year- or those with men, like 8 Mile, where we see a character just trying to get by, and maybe find some way to come into the world from an isolated self. And yet another movie might come to mind watching it- the also British but more 'middle class' story An Education about a teen girl also in a sudden close bond with a man just a little too old for her but friendly enough- that might cast a pall on what transpires over the course of the film.

But the greatness in Fish Tank, a very bleak movie that could be called 'beat-box realism', is a film that doesn't give anyone any kind of easy out. Not the main character of Mia played by Katie Jarvis, nor the Home Depot worker Connor played by Michael Fassbender, nor Mia's mother or sister or anyone really. Perhaps that's why we see Mia early on in the film- when, frankly, it doesn't look like anything else is really going on (the only truly frustrating section of the movie if not all bad)- try and free a horse tied to a trailer by a bunch of white trash. Maybe she sees something in the horse being tied up, or wants to free it for some reason because of her own predicament.

Mia, who has been kicked out of school and has no job, does have one thing that lights her fire, which is to dance to hip-hop and beats. She dances by herself in an abandoned tenement and she gets good, though wants to get better. There's an audition she could go to, and maybe get in to work at a club. But the movie isn't about that since, frankly, that would be the American version (can you say 'Flashdance 2009'?) It's about this setting and state of mind, and the effect it has on a disillusioned fifteen year old girl with no real prospects outside of her dancing, and a dangerous, mutual attraction to her mother's boyfriend, Connor.

Seeing this play out is rough and raw, like the DP was put on loan from the Wrestler specifically for this feature. Shots go on for a while sometimes, and it's natural to the bone. Or maybe just seemingly so; I could always get the sense (not that it's a bad thing in this case) that Jarvis and Fassbender were acting in their roles, digging in their characters just enough to disappear but not too far in to make it 'method' or anything. They have great chemistry on screen, but even that isn't what the filmmaker is getting at (nor, either, the consequences of a lustful encounter that springs between the two of them). It's about this girl and the disturbing set of circumstances she's in, having to be grown up without any real childhood left, and left with little else but anger and resentment and quick feet to run away. It's a small hard-knock movie about a hard-knock time in life for a girl of the "ghetto" as it were.

Vincent Snavely