Fish Tank is an excruciatingly sad, but amazing drama about Mia, a 15-year-old girl who lives a mostly bleak and hostile existence in an East London council estate. Fish Tank provides a brief respite in the form of her mom’s new boyfriend, played by Michael Fassbender. He disrupts the constant sniping, provides a different way of looking at life and encourages her instead of belittling her. Fish Tank is what Larry Clark’s Kids wishes it could be-an unflinching look at the life of a teenager with no safe harbor. Fish Tank probably ended up in my queue because a woman directs it, or Fassbender is in it.
Fish Tank makes The Diary of a Teenage Girl feel like an optimistic romp in the park. Fish Tank is a movie of life after the fall. The world is an uninhabitable place for all forms of life. Nothing functions the way it should. A fish should live in the water, and if it dies, its death should be treated with respect by further sustaining life instead of being left to rot on a dirty kitchen floor. Horses are chained up and surrounded by concrete. Young girls are constantly herded to a sexualized track even if it does not initially seem that way. Children smoke and drink like adults while ridiculing the lives of people on TV when in reality, those artificial lives are better than theirs.
No wonder Mia is angry and constantly on guard. When Fassbender’s character appears, Mia is naturally curious about him for two reasons: he is a nurturing father figure, and he is hot. Most reviewers jump to the hot part first because obviously he is Fassbender, but they miss the fact that all the other people in Mia’s life are mean to her, but he is not. He immediately figures out what she likes, dancing, and encourages her to pursue it. He includes her and her sister in activities instead of excluding them. He introduces her and her sister to a normal family outing in the country, which is in stark contrast to them being confined to their room while their mom parties. He acts like a provider by giving her money when she acts and trusting her with expensive equipment. He is the only person whom she has physical and mental interactions with that do not end in aggression. He tends to her wounds, gently carries her and initially talks to her without ridicule. In turn, her mother starts to act like a mother, doors of opportunity begin to open, and Mia makes a friend. He feels like a turning point as if better things are in her future.
Mia also does not completely trust him because she recognizes that he is a sexual being. She gets on a primal level and through experience that boys ridicule, harass and sexually threaten, but he is a man. She may not be attracted to boys, but she is attracted to this man. She is a teenage girl, and she recognizes on some level that it makes him problematic, but she does not outright reject him like the boys because he does not overtly do anything that the boys do to put her on guard. She goes through his wallet, eavesdrops on his phone conversations and rejects his paternalistic gestures out of a sense of self-preservation rooted in experience (he can’t be this nice; he must have a hidden agenda) and because she is painfully aware that he is not her father.
Fish Tank soon returns to grim reality and somehow things get worse, but Mia develops a deeper understanding of the world while hurtling towards a life that is probably just as hopeless as before, but with a knowledge of what she does not want. Fish Tank leaves no doubt that even though Mia has matured and become an empathetic individual who will no longer lash out in reaction to being hurt, she is probably still doomed to live her mother’s life, and so is her sister.
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I knew that Fassbender’s character was a dog when he complimented her by saying, “You dance like a black.” A compliment can still be racist. He knows that he is cute and was grooming her from jump. He reminded me of Warren Jeffs, a polygamist with no religious veneer, but with the same jealousy emerging in the presence of adolescent boys, i.e. competition. I’m just glad that he got scared before the younger sister got older. He could have put her to bed without taking her pants off, and I wanted to be wrong, but kept waiting for him to keep pushing the physical boundaries. When he had her smell his cologne, spanked her and offered her alcohol, he just confirmed my suspicions. What makes it worst is the idea that he is temporarily slumming it, and he is using their lives as his entertaining diversion. It makes him horrific. Was this his first foray into living other lives or is this what h does? I’m not sure.
Mia instinctually, but thoughtlessly, hurts his daughter because she is jealous of her and wants to lash out at him as her father figure. Hurt people hurt people. He betrayed her fundamentally by not ever really caring about her and her family first. If he had slept with her and stayed in a relationship with her mother or even left but did not have another family, sadly I think that she would have been satisfied by such an exploitive life because she was so emotionally starved for affection and has no idea what it is supposed to look like. The sad part is when the little girl and Mia cling to each other after Mia hurls her into the river and rescues her. They are entangled in pain and seeking comfort on levels that neither girl completely understands. Mia is physically closer to this little girl than her sister, and this little girl has no idea why this awful thing has happened to her. On some level, they are sisters and daughters brought together by the same father. Will she ever discover that her father is responsible for her pain?
Indeed Fish Tank paints a world similarly bewildered at taking the brunt of sudden and never ending abuse without explanation. Mia’s empathetic dance with her mother and learning how to interact without inflicting pain or being defensive is the only hope. She has already emotionally surpassed her mother. When she runs away with Billy, I was under no delusion that things would be better or that things would not eventually deteriorate with him. Billy is the only boy who did not sexually assault her, and like Mia, he is calm and aligned with the natural world. While their financial prospects are certainly bleak and unplanned pregnancies will be in their future, the only hope that they have is a recognition that life is special, and one can suffer, but coexist without lashing out at each other. Fish Tank’s hope is to be hurt without being hostile.