Fish Tank

I decided to catch Fish Tank on IFC On Demand months after its initial theatrical release, right as it is to be removed, because I've just read so many things that make it sound wonderful. I avoided it at first, as I had no special love for Andrea Arnold's previous directorial effort Red Road. But the good reviews combined with my appreciation for her Academy Award winning short Wasp finally got me to sit down and watch.

Well, Fish Tank is not, as its Metacritic score would have you believe, wonderful. It is good, with moments that really stand out, and it also features some seriously powerhouse performances. It's also much more Wasp than Red Road.

Katie Jarvis, in her debut role, astounds as a teenager in the slums of Essex, living with her single mom and her latest boyfriend, an often shirtless Michael Fassbender. Jarvis dreams of getting out of her bleak surroundings and becoming a hip-hop dancer. She and Fassbender eventually form a relationship of sorts, where he does things like give her money to get wasted and give her a camera to film her dancing for a contest entry. Then things go awry, as plots are wont to do.

Fish Tank moves leisurely through its story, letting the audience enjoy its more rambling moments of a teenager trying to gain comfort with her budding sexuality. It's when Arnold's script tries to get a real plot moving that I have problems. The increasing melodrama present in the second half of the film really works against the realistic style established in the beginning. Arnold also seems to be hung up on symbolism that too obviously hammers the impossible disconnect between Jarvis' feelings of being stuck and her dreams of dancing and getting away. Things with balloons, horses, and music videos.

But I did get to come away from this movie loving Michael Fassbender. His performance in 2008's Hunger, and I was really hoping it was not a fluke. I'm ecstatic to say he is clearly an actor capable of broad range.

I'm going back to number ratings.

Fish Tank: 7.3