On a continuum, with the brutally abused teenager of Precious at one end and the almost genteel (by comparison) coming-of-age story of An Education at the other, Andrea Arnold's extraordinarily tough Fish Tank sits somewhere in the middle - perhaps inching closer to Precious, given Arnold's unflinching examination of a troubled 15-year-old's hard slog toward adulthood.
Set in and around a stark public housing high-rise in Essex, east of London, Fish Tank stars the untrained, and unforgettable, newcomer Katie Jarvis as Mia Williams - a scowling, solitary soul who lives with her younger sister (Rebecca Griffiths) and their mother (Kierston Wareing) in a flat overlooking industrial parks, marshlands, and a giant wind turbine not far from the Thames estuary. It's a landscape of dramatic contrasts: big blue skies and thrumming highways, tidy suburban homes and derelict buildings, empty lots and idle kids up to no good. (Robbie Ryan's cinematography is spectacular.)
