Bird's Eye View

Fish Tank: An Interview With Andrea Arnold

Fish Tank

Premiered at Cannes, Fish Tank is the highly anticipated movie from one of our favourite British directors Andrea Arnold.  It tells the story of troubled 15 year old Mia, played by fresh talent Katie Jarvis, whose life changes when her mother brings home a mysterious stranger. Receiving rave reviews from everyone, including the lucky BEV ladies who caught it at Cannes, we are super-excited for this “funny, moving and profound” film’s release.  So excited, in fact, we sent Sophie Ivan to catch up with  the inspiring Andrea Arnold.  Read on for her amazing interview.  For more information about the film, you can also visit our First Weekenders page.

Sophie Ivan: You like using unknowns and non-professional actors in your films, so obviously Katie Jarvis [discovered arguing with her boyfriend on a station platform] was an incredible find. What did you see in her?

Andrea Arnold: Katie was very close to what I had written. I was always looking for someone who was very close to the girl I had written. She had a lot of spirit and energy but also a vulnerability and innocence that felt right. She came from where we were going to film and felt very authentic too.

SI: Do you feel a sense of responsibility when you pluck someone out of obscurity like that?

AA: Very much so.  But I think we took great care of her. Everyone on the

Director Andrea Arnold, clutching the Oscar she won for short film Wasp, screened at BEV film festival 2005

crew did. I also know it is an amazing opportunity for her and potentially life changing if she wants it. Katie is also strong and her own person. She doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do. I think she will make of it what she wants.

SI: What was the casting process like? The energy and sexual tension between Mia, her mother and Fassbender’s character is incredible.
 
AA: I don’t think there was any genuine sexual tension between any of them. They got along great and enjoyed [working with] each other but what you describe, I think it what was in the script, their skills as actors and the tricks of cinema.  None of them even met before we started filming.

SI: It’s hard to draw comparison between your films and those of other directors but Fish Tank reminded me of Better Things, in how it seems to fuse quite an impressionistic sensibility with naturalistic acting, dialogue and a social setting we think we know all too well from media coverage. Was that contrast deliberate?

AA: I am ashamed to say I have not seen Better Things but I plan to and I love Duane [Hopkins’] shorts. Duane and I started around the same time. We made Dog and Field at the same time. Then we made a Cinema Extreme at the same time. We seem to have some similar sensibility. We both grew up in urban rural environments and that reflects in our work I think. I think we also both have a desire to explore cinema in a visceral way.

SI: The music video and TV footage in the film is striking. The sexualisation of young girls is so culturally pervasive, yet we rarely see the subject broached on film, or many complex representations of teenage sexuality.  Were these key issues for you when you started writing the film?

AA: No. I never start with issues or themes. I start with people and then try to write them as truthfully as I can.  What comes out is unexpected and often a surprise.
 
SI: Dancing seems a great metaphor for the awkwardness of a young girl growing up and trying to feel comfortable in her body and with her sexuality – and how others perceive it. How did it come about?

AA: Again, not something I was conscious of. I loved dancing as a teenager and found it a way of losing myself and being myself all at the same time. As Mia is so angry all the time and has so many barriers I thought dancing was a good way of showing another side of her, a place she could be herself.

SI: Obviously it would be crass to reduce your films to a ‘social message’, or suggest that’s why you make them, but do you have in mind who you’re making your films for? Or who you want to see them?

AA: I am making them for myself. I don’t know who else to make them for.  I hope that people who find them might see that something is said from the heart and that might mean something but I don’t expect anyone to get them or even like them. 
 

Scene from Fish Tank

SI: We’re so used to seeing kitchen-sink council estates presented as visual shorthand for deprivation and troubled upbringings. The way you present Mia’s surroundings is almost surreal by contrast. How did you decide on the locations?

AA: I grew up in an urban rural place and loved that you could be with lots of people one minute and then roam a bit and be in a field and by yourself the next. In the film I picked somewhere that I felt I knew and was right for what I had written.

SI: Is it true that you filmed in sequence, only revealing the plot to the actors bit by bit?

AA: Yes, in sequence. It’s a luxury I know but I felt it would be very important for Katie to know where she was going.  The actors got the script for the week ahead at the weekend.

SI: You’ve said you rely on intuition to guide your writing, which must demand a huge deal of confidence and faith. What advice would you give to filmmakers starting out, trying to find their own voice and style?

AA: I guess trusting your intuition would require some faith and confidence but by trusting yourself that is exactly what you gain. If you try to be like someone else then how can you be confident about what you are doing? The only way is to trust yourself.

Fish tank is released Friday September 11th. Do show your support by seeing it on its opening weekend and help ensure that the film lives in cinemas long enough to get the widest possible audience.