Fish Tank

So the other day when I was at the library returning The Great Gatsby, that left me feeling sad and as far as the Toby Stephens movie I haven't seen yet, I'm thinking "nooooo!" Well, in the library I took a look around and saw the dvd's. I must not have been in a library in a long time because I had no idea one can lend dvd's for free! :D

As my eyes ran over the movies some familiar name caught my eye. Fish Tank. I was like 'wait a minute, Fish Tank, who's in it?' and then I remembered 'Michael Fassbender!' and I immediately picked it up. It has great reviews so I thought; why not make it my Thursday movie.

I basically went from a novel that left me feeling sad to a movie that left me feeling sad. 

Fish Tank is about a girl who has more enemies than friends. Her mother is a real bitch to her, her little sister is equally ill behaved as she is. Mia is a 15 year old girl who loves to dance, she lives in "the hood" as I'd call it and doesn't have much in way of love, money or comfort in her life.

One day when she's in the kitchen her mother's new boyfriend comes down half naked (that made me drool quite a bit) and compliments her on her dancing. She seems kind of wierded out about this guy at first, who is all nice, sweet, caring and fun but she soon starts to be intrigued with him (and with his natural charm, who could blame her). 

nice arse there Fassy ^_~..eerrr I mean Connor

dear lord...

ahem...

*Spoilers*

This guy is about the only one in her life that treats her nice and doesn't want anything from her. At first she is a bit suspicious, and also a bit jealous (especially that scene when he's having sex with her mother) but in her own way she starts to trust him and probably imagines herself in love with him. 

He takes her family out for a "fishing trip"

Carries her when she's injured her foot.

 And plays around with her..

..asking if his perfume smells good

She makes friends with a boy whose horse she tried to "set free" and brings him over to Connors workplace, probably to try and make him jealous (which later on turns out to actually have worked.)

When her mother is passed out drunk one day and Connor is drinking on the sofa he asks her if she'll show him the dance to an audition she's signed up for. She dances, then sits on the couch beside him, and the sexual tension is by then so thick you could cut it with a knife. He then seduces her.

Right after having had sex with Mia, Connor realizes that that was probably pretty stupid of him. He says that they'll talk about about it the next day, but when Mia wakes up he's taken his things and left. Mia chases after him and somehow finds out where he lives. 

It comes to such a shock to Mia when she finds out that he's actually married and has a little daughter that she has a sort of panic attack and kidnaps his daughter when no one is looking.

After almost causing the child to drown, she returns the child to her home and walks back home.

In THAT scene, when he sees her walking on the road and chases her down and strikes her, I am SO fucking angry at him and at her for not saying what I would have said:

"You fucking bastard! You LIAR, how DARE you come in to my life and my mother's life under the pretences of being all good and nice and seduce both me and my mum! You took my virginity you fucking asshole! I LOVED you! I TRUSTED you! You were the only person who ever treated me good in my entire life, you shit head! How DARE you? How could you do this to me? To US? How can you live with yourself?"

But she didn't say that. She didn't say anything. But later on when she went over to the horse-boy and found out the horse was dead, she finally cried. I kept wondering throughout at how she could go through all of that   and not cry, even once. But then she did. The horse being dead was the final straw. 

'

In the end I guess she just had to get over it somehow. She's moving to Wales with the horse-boy and we see that at least her relationship with her sister, (whom she is hugging good-bye in the picture) and her mum improves. I love the scene when they dance together to Nas' "Life Is A Bitch" (and then you die).

Conclusions: This was a great movie in that it set you up to think that this beautiful, cheerful, considerate man was going to be the turning point in their lives, and then he turns out just to be another dissapoinment. That is also the most horrible thing about it. It is a bad thing to just live your life in quiet misery, knowing what a shitty life you have and can depend on it remaining that way. It is a worse thing still to have your hopes up for the future, to get a glimpse of the way things might have been and then to have it all stolen from you at the drop of a hat. Just when you are at your most vulnerable. Connor hurt the whole family, not just Mia, but also her mother who was heartbroken when he left, and her little sister who could've looked up to him as a father figure. It left me feeling very sad for Mia (though with the prospect of her "getting over it") and I can't help but feel like that song is really the theme for not only this movie but life in general "Life is a bitch, and then you die."

That being said, it WAS a great movie. It was beautifully filmed, the actors were amazing and you get really caught up in this girl's life and sucked in by the chemistry between Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender.