Wasp, Andrea Arnold, 2003 by ADAM RUTHERFORD

Wasp is a gritty British Drama focusing on a single mum dealing with bringing up her four kids while atempting to maintain a social life. It is obvious right from the first scene that Zoe, the central character, is a bad mother, when we see her dragging her kids up the road, fighting with another mother, and getting her children to stick thier middle fingers up as they walk away. The scene in the kitchen also shows the audience that the family is incredibly poor, as the only food they have is moldy bread and white sugar, the latter of which the children share around when theyr'e hungry. Zoe aspires to be Victoria Beckham and even has a picture of David Beckham on the kitchen wall, but as she is trapped in a council estate this is an unlikely ambition. At the end of the film when we see the wasp climb into the babys mouth (a metaphor for the dangers facing children growing up in this environment), we are shown the true scale of how the mother's selfish actions and complete disregard for responsibility can affect her children so badly. The film does go quite far to discuss these conventions but Arnold has done so in a very convincing way making the film seem real

There are many films which focus on families in council estates and how difficult life is for them, but this one uses very clever conventions, paticulary with the camera-work to make it unique. Wasp is filmed in such a way that it soon becomes easy to forget that it's a fictional story, and instead makes the audience believe what they are seeing. Andrea Arnold, an expert in the conventions of social realism has managed to make the film look like direct cinema, with the story sounding as authentic as the acting looks. The fact that the wasp at the end of the film is created using CGI is also incredibly unusual in a drama focusing on social realism, but even this manages to look seamless, and the wasp real.

One of the most intresting features of Wasp, is that despite the fact it looks like a real story, Arnold has managed to stick to a fictional format with an obvious narrative structure - a beggining, a middle and an end. The equilibrium of the film shows Zoe bumping into her old flame Dave and being invited out on a date, followed by the disequilibrium where we see Zoe bringing her children to the pub and making them wait for her outside, wher they encounter the wasp; and finally the resulting new equilibrium where Dave finds out Zoe has children and takes them all out for chips. It's very clever how Arnold hasd managed to use this narrative sturcture in such a realistic film, because obviously in real life not every situation is as easy to narrate in such a way.

The obvious themes represented throughout the film are family, relationships and responsibility. Zoe is a young mother who struggles to look after herself never mind her four children. Zoe is tested thoughout the film, given the choice to put her children or herself first, unfortunatly mainly choosing herself. At the end of the film Zoe is shown that she is directly responsible for her children, and if she shuns these responsibilities only bad things can happen. This also relates to the issues raised in the film, young single mothers living on council estates who struggle to bring up thier children. Child Protection services taking away her children is a brought up a few times throughout the film, a very real threat for someone with Zoe's attitude towards children, and something that is happening more and more every year in the UK. Despite Wasp going quite far to convey it's message, it does well to show how easily tragedy can come around if children are not looked after possibility. There is a section at the end where a bunch of drunk lads walk past the children, giving the audience the thought that something very bad could easily occur if one of them spotted the kids.

BY Adam Rutherford