Really interesting to watch this film before American Honey. Arnold provides an unflinching look at class divides, without trying to ascribe a moral narrative; each shot is treated with the same thoughtful and meticulous care.
Fish Tank
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Netherlands,
- United Kingdom
- 2009
- · 123m
Director
Andrea Arnold
Cast
Katie Jarvis,
Michael Fassbender,
Kierston Wareing,
Rebecca Griffiths,
Harry Treadaway,
Jason Maza
Genre
Drama
Fifteen-year-old Mia is in a constant state of war with her family and the world around her. When she meets her party-girl mother’s charming new boyfriend Connor, she is amazed to find he returns her attention, and believes he might help her start to make sense of her life.
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100
Chicago Reader by J.R. Jones
The only person who seems to understand the angry teen is mom's new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender of Hunger), though their friendship oscillates between intimate and vaguely creepy.
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Arnold deserves comparison with a British master director like Ken Loach.
91
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
The amazingly natural first-timer was discovered, in a gift of publicity-ready truth, while having an argument with her boyfriend at a train station.
90
Variety
What makes the picture feel special is its unflinching honesty and lack of sentimentality or moralizing, along with assured direction and excellent performances.
90
Salon by Andrew O'Hehir
Absolute dynamite.
90
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
Arnold's first feature, "Red Road" (2006), centers on another outsider, a woman who monitors security cameras. The film is formally brilliant, but it doesn't have the breathtaking openness of Fish Tank.
90
Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey
The 17-year-old so completely captures the innocence, cynicism and rage of a child of poverty and divorce on the edge of adulthood that it feels as if you are spying on Mia, so achingly real, so tangible does her world seem here.
90
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
It's been a good while since I've seen a movie whose most powerful sequence was both unforeseen and entirely unpredictable as it played out.
90
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The contradictions of adolescence have rarely been conveyed with such authenticity and force.
90
NPR by Ian Buckwalter
Andrea Arnold has crafted a scene that approaches a literal embodiment of the term "kitchen-sink drama" here is most likely coincidence; nevertheless, her film is a bold new entry in that long-standing British tradition of disquieting social realism.
90
Variety by Leslie Felperin
What makes the picture feel special is its unflinching honesty and lack of sentimentality or moralizing, along with assured direction and excellent performances.
80
Empire
A vivid portrayal of life at society's margins with a compelling turn from newcomer Jarvis. Little wonder it scored at Cannes.
80
The New Yorker by David Denby
Fish tank may begin as a patch of lower-class chaos, but it turns into a commanding, emotionally satisfying movie, comparable to such youth-in-trouble classics as "The 400 Blows." [18 Jan. 2010, p. 83]
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
The film belongs to Jarvis, however, and she makes the most of it with expressive features that convey Mia's mixed-up emotions from raging temper to sweet vulnerability. She will go far.
67
The A.V. Club by Noel Murray
In that way, Jarvis is a lot like Arnold: an artist who knows the steps, but doesn't yet have all the moves.
50
Village Voice
Jarvis gives a ferociously persuasive performance in an otherwise routine tale of domestic disaster.
40
Time Out by Keith Uhlich
A grimy kitchen-sink melodrama with an Ajax cleanser script: The muck is all surface, the turmoil cleanly shallow and contrived, though never less than gripping.
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