Real life in the Fish Tank
With Red Road, and her acclaimed new film, Fish Tank, the Oscar and Cannes winner is fast becoming one of Britain's most respected directors. She talks to Amy Raphael about her time as a Top of the Pops dancer, the lack of female film-makers, and why her latest film, though brutally unsentimental, made her cry
Andrea Arnold photographed in London, August 2009. Photograph: Suki Dhanda
Andrea Arnold makes extraordinary films about ordinary people. Her new film, Fish Tank, a modern love story set on a housing estate in Essex, is quite simply spellbinding. At 48, Arnold finds herself at the vanguard of a new generation of British filmmakers poised to take over from the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. Up there near Arnold is Hunger directorSteve McQueen; on the way up are uncompromising, idiosyncratic directors such as Joanna Hogg (Unrelated), Duane Hopkins (Better Things), Thomas Clay (Soi Cowboy), Gideon Koppel (Sleep Furiously), Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor (Helen).
Yet even McQueen, for all that Hunger was feted, can't really touch Arnold's international success. In 2005 she won an Oscar for her outstanding short film Wasp. Charting a day in the life of a single mum who meets up with an old lover and leaves her four kids to fend for themselves in the pub carpark, it is disturbing in its honesty. Both her feature films – Red Road, an unsettling urban thriller and Fish Tank – won the Jury Prize at Cannes, in 2006 and 2009 respectively.
Most directors would be thrilled by such recognition but Arnold isn't a natural show-off. And, she says, awards ceremonies just don't get any easier. "I still find them terrifying. I don't like going up in front of all those people. Obviously I'm delighted that the films are recognised but I don't want to think awards matter. I read a great quote in a philosophy book recently: 'Don't worship the bitch goddesses of success and applause'."
