|
Frequently Bought Together
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product details
|
Reviews
Product Description
FISH TANK is the story of 15-year old Mia (Katie Jarvis), whose life is turned on its head when her mother (Kierston Wareing) brings home a new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender). Set in the decaying landscape and council estates of Essex, director Andrea Arnold reinforces her reputation as a British auteur and casts the same unflinching, unprejudiced gaze and touches on the themes of her Oscar-winning short WASP to create an original and unsettling tale for our age.
Product Description
United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Photo Gallery, Scene Access, Short Film, SYNOPSIS: A mother and daughter find themselves locked in an ugly battle over the same man in this drama from writer and director Andrea Arnold. Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis) is 15 years old and lives in a shabby apartment block with her mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), and younger sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths). Mia is a reckless and rebellious teenager who frequently argues with her mother and sister and has run afoul of the authorities at school, leading to her being suspended. With plenty of time on her hands, Mia spends her days drinking when she can find alcohol and partying in a empty flat near her apartment. Joanne is a single mother, and she's begun dating a new man, Connor (Michael Fassbender); when Joanne brings him home to meet the girls, Mia is immediately attracted to him, and it's soon clear Connor feels the same way about her. Mia attempts to seduce Connor to take him away from her mother, and when she succeeds, Joanne's greatest anger is not with the man who has slept with her underaged daughter, but the girl who is now a rival for the affections of her lover. Fish Tank was an official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, British Independent Film Awards, Cannes Film Festival, European Film Awards, Stockholm Film Festival, ...Fish Tank
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best British film since Harry Brown,
By
This review is from: Fish Tank [DVD] [2009] (DVD)
Fishtank is the story of Mia (Katie Jarvis); a 15-year old living on an estate in Barking. Behind closed doors she aspires of being a dancer and practices religiously, away from prying eyes, afraid to show any weakness to even her family. When her mother's new boyfriend, the charming Connor (Michael Fassbender) moves in and supports her in her dancing, she starts her coming of age and the lines between a friendship and her feelings start to blur.
I thought this film was really something special, completely different from the usual fare and had me captivated from beginnning to end. The relationship between Mia and Connor is electric, as he plays the supporting friend fantastically and you are not sure if it is completely one-sided or if there is mutual chemistry. Fishtank is well shot and illustrates the harshness of London council estates and what one must become in order to survive and persevere. More importantly, it shows Mia burning desire to escape her life through her aspirations to dance at any cost. Katie Jarvis is an excellent actress for someone of her age and shows a full set of emotions, with both angry and sensitive moments, you really start to feel for her in her trials and tribulations. The film is more of a snapshot of her life than a biography; as it begins and ends rather abruptly and nothing is really left resolved at the end, despite this it is a very powerful film and will leave you thinking about some of the issues broached well after the credits have rolled. Highly recommended!!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant and unassailable!,
By
This review is from: Fish Tank [DVD] [2009] (DVD)
'Fish Tank' is by far the best film of 2009. Cinematically, it is a masterpiece. The tough world of a council estate in Essex is conveyed powerfully and unsentimentally. Arnold depicts the harsh conditions that predominantly white working-class people live under truthfully, without subordinating her art to the usual tired left-wing critiques of poverty. She shows us behaviour which would normally be perceived as aberrant - such as primary school children smoking - without passing judgement. Life is harsh in Arnold's film, but there is plenty of it. 'Fish Tank' portrays society's most desperate and ignored and their means of escape - young Mia (Katie Jarvis) wants to be a dancer; her neurotic mother (Kierston Wareing) finds escape through sex and alcohol, as does her mother's handsome and mysterious boyfriend (Michael Fassbender).
There is no Ken Loach style sting-in-the-tail in this film. Arnold is not out to make explicit political points, but one thing she does go out to show is the reality behind the lives of the so called 'underclass', people whom society demonises and slaps ASBOs on in the hope that they will disappear into a corner. The council estate and its surrounding area, the docklands around Tilbury, are skilfully rendered by beautiful, atmospheric camerawork - there are moments we see shots of the moon and a solitary tree blowing in the wind, subtly contrasting nature with the manmade dull grey concrete tower blocks and estate that Mia and all the other residents inhabit. On the DVD extras for her previous feature film 'Red Road', Arnold commented on how amidst the poverty there is life and vibrancy to the people who live on council estates. This was not sentimental glamorisation or cheap sympathy on her part for Britain's poor, but an affirmation and assertion that there is life burning intensely in these places. Her observations expose how shamefully ignorant we are to pass judgement on our fellow living, breathing citizens and not see their dreams as valuable to society - that is far more antisocial and deleterious to society than an eight-year old child puffing on a cigarette. A brilliant, life affirming film that is at times shocking and unsettling, yet restores the soul. This is not typical coming-of-age cinema fare Don't miss this film: life is too short!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
life's hard, get on and live it,
By Hill Walker "Pennine Dweller" (The Pennines of course!) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fish Tank [DVD] [2009] (DVD)
Fish Tank is a wonderful fresh-faced drama about a teenage girl's difficult and somewhat emotionally deprived life with her young sister and uncaring mother on a rough housing estate. It's unvarnished, unsentimental, hard, honest and ends really effectively.
The short film Wasp which accompanies the main feature is an absolute edge of the seat gem. It tells the story of a very young and scandalously irresponsible mother of 3 small children over the period of about a day. Truly an excellent little film as deserving of a main billing but for its brevity.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
