Fish Tank

Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank socially realistic drama that depicts the coming of age story of a 15 year old girl infatuated with her mother's boyfriend. As a director Arnold appears to enjoy applying the natural world into her work and uses elements such as bugs as stylistic features for her films(Wasp -2003) and rap/dance music to move plot along throughout her stories. She also chooses to shoot at a 4:3 ratio, with her reasoning being that " A portrait frame. My films are generally from the point of view of one person … It gives them real respect and importance. It’s a very human frame, I think.'  Which I believe she does to make her films appear more relatable to audiences.

 Her first film 'Wasp' (2003) is an Oscar award winning tale detailing the story of a negligent mother and she filmed the particularly low budget film in her hometown of Dartmouth, due to the success of that film she was able to make her first feature length film in the form of 'Red Road' (2006 box office of £154,8920) which was a stylistic experiment by several filmmakers who decided to base their films around the same characters. Due to the success of Red Road and the Oscar winner that was Wasp. Andrea Arnold then moved onto Fish Tank.

Mirroring the characters of Wasp and Fish Tank Andrea Arnold herself also grew up on a housing estate to a 16 year old mother who the followed to have 5 more children by the time she was 22. Arnold described her home as 'chalk pits and fields and woods and motorways. I was always out exploring.' and she predicted she would end up with the same future her mother had. Similarly to the character of Mia in Fish Tank, Arnold sought escape from her grim surroundings through dance and hip hop and succeeded by earning a place at an elite dance school.

Fish Tank is used by Arnold to display a 'broken Britain' it's set in a particularly bleak part of Essex with the protagonist (Mia) not being the conventional female lead, Katie Jarvis the actress who plays Mia is a non-actor who was picked out by Arnold due to her similarities to the character as she was discovered while screaming at her boyfriend at a train station so contextually she's unconventional but as a character she represents the females of england that are more represented as a statistic than in the media as a fully fledged character with depth. With her struggling grades and sour attitude she represents what is described as 'broken Britian', themes of abuse and poverty are heavy in this film as well as themes of entrapment within her surroundings and it also paints that this is the real England and not the high terraced houses that it is believed to be.

The aim of the film is not to paint a hero or a villain, but perfectly reflect the social connotations of Britain and the reality of the boredom that naturally occurs when you live a life without money but that. that doesn't define you as a person and it's what you do with that time that still counts, this is shown through the escapism that is shown with music and dance which many people in poorer areas use as an escape as creativity is free.