FISH TANK New Lights

Andrea Arnold’s FISH TANK deepens her exploration of the British working class on view in her Oscar-winning 2003 short film, WASP, and in her 2006 Cannes Jury Prize-winning feature debut, RED ROAD. Even more, Arnold’s new film (marking her second win of Cannes’ Jury Prize), evokes the social realist tradition and influence of the gritty British New Wave films of the ’50s and ’60s. In a remarkable acting debut, Katie Jarvis plays Mia, a brash 15-yeor-old on the cusp of a sexual coming of age. The cheap public housing block where Mia lives with her single mother and younger sister can barely contain their bad behavior and brutal affection, let alone her mum’s new boyfriend (HUNGER’s Michael Fassbender) With headphones on, Mia finds an escape route through dance and the calm of Constable’s pastoral Essex countryside, where the wasteland is transformed into waves of gross and miles of sky.