Fish Tank

Much of the tension developed here trades on a “will they/won’t they” situation that seems to pertain between the 15 year old Mia and her mother’s latest boyfriend, who is somewhat her senior, it goes without saying. So, is this movie about child abuse/exploitation? Well, you can decide, as we are given apt material for a vigorous post-movie debate, particularly as the filmmakers, and this applies to the movie more generally, not just the exploitation thread, is obviously concerned with telling a gripping yarn, and not a strictly realistic one.

There’s a certain sense in which the events in a narrative should feel to the audience as they evolve “organically” from, by which I mean they are compatible with, the conflicts that have been set up between the characters in the given setting. The ace in the hole for the filmmakers here is that the main protagonist, the aforementioned Mia, is something of a wanton teenager, and so her norms of behaviour are, let us say, loosely defined, giving the writers more scope for assigning to her a plausible reaction to any given situation that she is faced with. This isn’t overplayed, but we get the impression that the filmmakers primarily want to intrigue and emotionally involve us, and if they can do so with an “organic” and credible story then all the better.

However, we could consider a different position here, and assume that the degree to which we agree to emotionally invest in the movie is largely governed by realism of setting, characters’ accents, details of lifestyle, and that the unavoidable “dramatic” elements, dialogue to move the story on, for example, are secondary. That may be the case here, such is the sense of authenticity we get for Mia’s life in a rundown unnamed Essex town (which, we find out, is near the marginally better-off Tilbury). Whatever the case, we see everthing through the directors lens, and there are a variety of effects employed here, changing focus during the shot and slow-motion, to keep things visually exciting. Mia is into hip-hop, so this features strongly – this, and any other music used, is diegetic – even providing the backdrop for one of the few moments of mutual goodwill between the characters. The scene where Mia’s mother dances in the kitchen after her first night with her new boyfriend is noteworthy for packing a lot of information into a short space.

Mia’s world is somewhat constrained, a fact reflected by the small number of characters that feature. This is partly due to her isolation resulting from her anti-social behaviour that has led her to falling out with her friend. When one character says “Say hello to the world from me”, this small-world syndrome is given air, at the same time suggesting that Mia could “escape” into the world, which would in turn suggest a greater symbolism ascribable to a recurrent image of a tethered horse than we might suspect at first.

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