Paint Dry

doctorsmoothlove

The difference between Fish Tank and other recent films about poor girls is its lack of (original) narrative. Director Andrea Arnold depicts a story that is a glorified retread of nearly every youth-in-trouble film. It's a recreation of a situation that is familiar to anyone with a brief understanding of what it's like to be poor. We do not see anything uniquely English other than accents and locations. The movie doesn't need to take place in Essex. It just so happens that the director and leading actress live there. This story could be transplanted across the pond or across the world for that matter. It isn't terrible, yet it's awfully generic.

Fish Tank was filmed in chronological order weekly until it was finished. The cinematographer went for a realistic look by employing handhelds and occasionally long shots. The characters behave naturally, given their circumstances, but I kept asking myself why I would watch a fictional version of something that would have been better served as a documentary.

Precious can at least claim to have "been based on the novel Push". Such is not true with Fish Tank. Its blandness is based on its director alone. She even found an actual girl from Essex to play the title role. Maybe had she followed the girl around (she was found arguing with her boyfriend) that would have been a film worth seeing. Unlike Precious, whose life was altered in someway (for better or worse), nothing happens to the main character this time. She begins the film as she ends it.

Mia is a fifteen year old girl who lives in public housing with her very young mother and little sister. She does not go to school or do much of anything girls who age are supposed to do. Her only respite is dancing to hip hop songs and drinking. We have the impression that she doesn't have any kind of satisfying emotional relationship with anyone.

Things change suddenly when her mother begins dating a new guy named Connor. He seems to take interest in her and encourages her to reply to a wanted ad for young female dancers. He gives her some music and even takes her fishing. Connor doesn't bother telling Mia or her mother that he's actually married with child. Mia finds out after she sleeps with him and responds by kidnapping his daughter. She returns the kid and decides to move out of her crummy house and live with a friend.

Connor isn't a pedophile, I think. He is a man who exploits his friendship with a girl not necessarily against her wishes either. The mother even derides Mia for wearing skimpy clothing when Connor is around. The love triangle is made possible by the impossibility of effective communication. Not even Connor is able to decide what he wants with Mia or even with her mother. They could both be his play-things or both his opiates for suburban life. The title may refer the audience, as spectator, watching these people move about the redundancy of their lives.

The movie is told from Mia's perspective, and, as it is fictional, could have taken the sympathies of any of its other characters. I agree that Mia's character is not contrived and delivers a great deal of palpable humanity. And I also agree that I found her character irritating. Maybe the movie should be called (latex) Paint Dry.

Not Recommended

score 5/10

doctorsmoothlove 21 May 2010

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2253073/