Mia Williams , is a 15-year old girl who has no friends and whose family is vitriolic and complicated. Mia is fiesty and uncomfortable with who she is, but she loves to dance. Every day she visits an abandoned apartment block, purchases alcohol from an underground source, goes up to a room and dances to her disc man's output on two insufficient speakers. And she's good. However, one morning, her routine is disrupted by an unexpected encounter with her mother's new boyfriend.
Defiant Fish
Mia lives in defiance of everything; school, family and town. She doesn't do things the other girls do, she doesn't want to go to school, and she is vituperative to her mother and little sister. She is basically a punk; she has poor manners and drinks alcohol like a fish. In her disdain and hatred for everything around her, she finds solace in dance. Dance is her only source of freedom and she hides it from everyone, as if to keep this precious part of herself safe.
Life in a Small Town
Freedom, a major theme in Fish Tank, is beautifully illustrated by Mia's love for dance and for the gypsies' horse. Mia escapes from her difficult family life into the world of music. It seems to be the thread that holds her together through the impossibly claustrophobic life of her small town. Her dead-end life, which she defiantly refuses to accept, is symbolized by the dying fish on the grass that Connor skewers with a stick. When she sees the gypsies' horse restrained by a chain, she vows to free it and returns several times to do so, almost getting raped in the process. In the end of the film, when Mia disgustedly abandons the 'dance' interview and finds out that the horse has past away, she sits down and cries; suggesting that she had woken up to the reality of her situation. Her immature disillusionment finished with, in readiness for adulthood.
Sexual Healing
Connor, Mia's mother's boyfriend, is essential to the maturation of Mia. Not only does he open her eyes to her sexuality, but also, he invites her to love herself. He is the only one who approves of her and is enthusiastic about her dreams and her aspiration to become a dancer. However, by the very nature of their association, it is clear that only tragedy will befall everyone involved. Mia, wishing she was sexier than her mother, secretly wishes to seduce him and when she does and he leaves, she chases after him. Once again refusing to accept reality: their relationship is impossible because he's her mother's lover, but worse, he's married and has a child as well.
Fish Tank is a honest rendering of the difficulty of growing up in a lower class family in a small town with only an effervescent dream to keep one alive.
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