Thursday, January 28, 2010




Fish Tank is really good, isn’t it? Except watching it I couldn’t help feel it was basically composed of several other films. Notably Pavee Lackeen ( from which it borrows much of its liminal space, roadside/constant traffic stuff, and troubled central girl ) Bullet Boy in its gazing off the balconies/ framing of the estates spaces and the blocks of flats, (maybe even Nick Love’s positively tropical vision of estate life Goodbye Charlie Bright ) and Morvern Callar in its visual tone and it’s emphasis on the sense of touch. Not that I want to negate some really superb moments of course, but in the end it’s a bit, don’t-worry-she–gets-out, as is Charlie Bright, as is Shifty. And the final shot of the heart-shaped helium-filled silver balloon cutting across the Estatescape provoked a certain amount of meh-ness in me I have to say.


4 comments:

owen hatherley said...

The balloon is rather unforgiveable, the horse also. But in general Fish Tank seemed like a well-acted, beautifully shot and sharply written thing let down by a plot which can't quite break from social realist cliché, though it pulls it nearly to breaking point; she obviously has this wet, humanist instinct which comes in and ruins the meticulously constructed tensions, cf the unbelievably misjudged last 20 minutes of Red Road. Anyway, this is a bit short for an Impostume film post, no? Were you really that nonplussed?

Anonymous said...

not so much nonplussed as knackered... i've had my fill of long, film related work for the moment....

the horse is a bit groaningly obvious and partly stolen from an excellent Irish film called Garage, where it plays a much more ambiguous and powerful symbolic role

still.. there's no doubting Arnold's technical skill... esp in the sex scene.. the shifting pov shots and camera positioning give it real intensity... id say her masterpiece is yet to come ...if she can manage to kill her shmaltz...

傢伙 said...

外表往往與事實本身不符,世人卻容易被表面裝飾所欺騙了 ..................................................

Piotrek said...

mother/daughter dance scene at the end (with NAS song) reminded me of similar "nil by mouth" scene