Little women

Today I saw another of the Cannes films that won a prize. It's the British Fish Tank, and again its Prix du Jury is well deserved. That portrait of a teenage girl won't be forgotten.

Mia is a rebellious British teenager whose life isn't a piece of cake. Actually it sucks a lot. You wouldn't want to live in that Essex housing estate that is her fish tank. As for her family, it sucks too, her mother (the wonderful actress that starred in Loach's Its a Free World) wouldn't get a prize in parenting, and her little sister has a filthy mouth(yes the film is filled by bad language from all the female characters but the little sister delivers a very creative coarse language and is hilarious). The three females basically keep insulting each other all the time. Mia doesn't go to school anymore and she doesn't have any friends left. The 15 year old Mia is alone, feeling awful –she hides her body beneath shapeless sportswear just like she hides her softer side–reckless and restless.
The fish tank is the metaphor of the many cages Mia wants to escape.  One of the them is her own body, hence her drinking booze (something her mother must have passed on her), her practicing hip-hop dance when nobody watches, and her trying to free a white horse who's chained up by some gypsies in a wasteground. One day a man shows up in the flat and sees her; Connor a hunk whom Mia's mother has brought back. His arrival leads to new possibilies, hope and, perhaps, disappointments.

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