Imagine that Jason Reitman’s Oscar-winning film “Juno” is a hand towel. Now, imagine wringing all the sentimentality and snappy dialogue out of it and leaving it crumpled up to bake in the sun. The dirty, twisted, hardened thing that you’d find a day or two later might resemble “Fish Tank.” It’s a new film by Andrea Arnold.
Mia, the protagonist, is neither witty nor charming. She is, in fact, unreasonable, rude and at times obnoxious. When she yells at some preppy-looking girls that they can’t dance, she breaks one of their noses after they retaliate. This is not some lovable little punkette; this is a girl who’s 15, and already feels beaten by the world.
Mia is one of those kids whose mother looks to be around the same age as Mia’s peers. Sometimes that’s not such a terrible thing, but in this case Mom is more interested in sex and malt liquor than she is in parenting.
The family, which includes Mia’s obscenity-spewing little sister, Tyler, lives in a cramped apartment in an impoverished area outside of London. Mia spends most of her time yelling at Tyler, not listening to her mother and storming out of the apartment to wander the streets — or sometimes, to dance.
Early on, we see her break into what looks like an empty apartment with some beer, tiny speakers and a Walkman. There she drinks and breakdances, all the while looking out through a closed window across the poor surroundings.
The movie spends quite a while here, watching her express herself in this pathetic, empty room. She’s trapped. “Fish Tank” is a great film because it doesn’t just tell us Mia’s story; it makes her drowning spirit manifest.
The film’s caged allusions are many, its title not being the least of them. It continuously deals narratively or visually with trapped animals: a dying horse that Mia tries to unchain; a hamster, cowering in the corner of its tank and a leashed dog wanting desperately to run free. Mia shares the feeling with these creatures.
She’s a child and an adult. A soul lost in that desperate purgatory of adolescence, ingrown and confused. The film visualizes this in a shot of Mia drinking a fifth of vodka in her room, which still looks like a little girl’s — all pink and sequins.
This extremely competent use of symbolism makes the film’s plot all the more engaging. One day, Mom brings home Connor, a big, handsome, smiling new boyfriend. Whereas she couldn’t care less about her children, he immediately treats them with respect and interest, and they all share a road trip to a lake together.
Mia’s initial resistance to Connor melts away. Unlike everyone else, he talks to her about her, and even acknowledges her dancing. The relationship that slowly unfolds between them makes for a film as uncertain and satisfyingly complex as its protagonist. And it’s no wonder that Katie Jarvis is so delicately natural, so believable as Mia; before this film, she’d never acted before in her life.
You might argue that we’ve had our cinematic share of the tumultuous teenage soul, but the performances and cinematography in “Fish Tank” are the flesh on its “coming-of-age” skeleton. Never once does it feel like a retread. Never once did I roll my eyes; I was too worried I’d miss any of the film’s many small, perfect moments of inward adolescent torment that are beautiful in their own way. It’s hard to be a kid growing up, and it’s certainly hard to be a film about a kid growing up. “Fish Tank” stands among the best.
Grade: A
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“Fish Tank”
Guild Cinema
3405 Central Ave.
Friday through March 30
3 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 8 p.m. *
