FISH TANK: living life on the bottom

FISH TANK tells a story that can be taken as a damning and depressing indictment of society's failure to provide opportunities for those at the bottom of the pile to better themselves, or as a heartwarming, if unwashed and foul-mouthed, testament to the resilience of the human spirit in overcoming adversity and making lemonade out of lemons.
The reality is somewhere in the middle and though, by the end of the story our heroine is striking out for pastures new it's more because she's run out of options at home than because she's refused to give-in to her circumstances.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a combative15 year old girl living with her younger sister and their unemployed boozy, single mum in a flat in a rundown council high-rise on a charmless estate in the Essex suburbs of London. Faced with a mother who resents her kids for robbing her of her youth, Mia has become withdrawn, with a tough outer shell; relying entire on her own wits, and treating everyone with suspicion and contempt.
Dance is her only outlet, the one time she feels good about herself, but even that is a solitary pursuit. She practices her hip hop routines in an empty flat on the estate, showing them to no one. That changes when her mum's new boyfriend, Connor, starts showing an interest in her and encourages her to pursue her dream. 
But as Mia slowly lets down her guard in response to Connor's warmth, his fatherly concern for her wellbeing begins to take on more disturbing overtones.
While the plot may sound familiar FISH TANK succeeds in being more than just another teenage rites of passage drama because of Jarvis's compelling performance. Mia's life story may check all the boxes in the list of "top 10 signs you've had an underprivileged upbringing" but Jarvis makes them a living, breathing reality.Mia is not an easy character to like but Jarvis makes it possible.
Michael Fassbender is also extremely effective as Connor, bringing real depth to a character who has so much potential for good right up to the moment when he succumbs to his baser instincts.
FISH TANK is gritty, rough-edged stuff. Think of it as the flipside to "An Education" which is reviewed elsewhere on this blog.  The big difference is that where the latter ended on an optimistic note, the former can't make any such promises.