THE TITLE OF FISH TANK IS A SLY BIT of misdirection. Set in the housing projects of Essex, a downscale suburban county that borders London, the movie is named for the glass-walled midrise apartment buildings where its protagonist lives. Mia (Katie Jarvis) is 15, and aimless at best. Her one passion is hip-hop dancing, which she practices in a vacant apartment she's commandeered upstairs. She goes home to eat, sleep, and bicker with her hard-partying mother and her abrasive little sister. (All three regularly call each other "bitch," "cunt," and "fuckface.")

In a few naturalistic opening scenes, writer-director Andrea (Red Road) Arnold illustrates Mia's conflicting impulses: She tries to rescue a scrawny horse she thinks is being mistreated, but also head-butts a girl who insults her. If Mia thinks better of animals than humans, that's not an entirely unreasonable outlook. But then she meets a person she can care about: Connor (Hunger's Michael Fassbender), her mother's well-built new boyfriend, who makes his entrance (into the kitchen) in a pair of low-slung jeans and nothing else.

Connor is no savior from the mysterious lands beyond the fish tanks. He works at a nearby building-supply store, and consumes almost as much booze as Mia's mum. But he has a car, interests beyond drinking and dancing, and what in Essex passes for sophisticated musical taste: vintage American soul, including Bobby Womack and James Brown. (Mia prefer Nas's shallowly nihilistic "Life's a Bitch.") Connor also seems fairly good at being a dad, at least on a part-time basis. (Has he had practice?) Connor encourages Mia's dancing, and would probably even help the girl with her homework — if she ever went to school.

The problem is that Mia isn't seeking a father, at least not exactly. She's looking for a man who will take her seriously, both as a child and as a woman. This could be harmless, except that Conner gets as bewildered as Mia by their new relationship. The two flirt, and Conner's tenderness isn't altogether paternal. Mia wants to experiment with the overt sexuality she's learned from hip-hop dance routines, and Connor seems a safe lab partner. (She also meets a boy who's closer to her own age — a prospect who's more realistic, and less intriguing.)

Fish Tank is more concerned with raw emotion than craft or shape. It was shot with handheld camera and natural light, in a nearly square format that suggests a home video, and its script spirals nearly out of control: Mia's final attempt at revenge doesn't seem entirely in character. But the story, if far from classically structured, becomes more persuasive as details accumulate. The movie plays like cin´ma v´rit´, with a fundamental integrity that's finally more powerful — even heartbreaking — for not being impeccably controlled.

The handful of hostile American reviews of Arnold's drama accuse it of being just another example of British "miserabilism." The film's name encourages this interpretation, suggesting that Mia is who she is because of where she lives. But Fish Tank's title is more of a tease than a statement, much like that of another recent British release, 44 Inch Chest. (Reviewers have struggled to explain the latter term as a statement on puffed-up macho, but in fact it refers to an actual piece of furniture, which is on screen for most of the movie.)

Arnold clearly wants her story to be rooted in a specific location and culture, which is why she hired Jarvis, an Essex native with no acting experience. Yet the movie is primarily about adolescence, not lower-middle-class British life. Fish Tank has been compared to the work of leftist British filmmakers like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, but it's political only by the broadest of implications. Arnold has more in common with such younger British directors as Shane (A Room for Romeo Brass) Meadows and Lynne (Ratcatcher) Ramsey, both specific-regionalists who have expertly charted the perplexities of youth. Yes, Mia could only have come from Essex. But that doesn't mean her disappointment, rage, and confusion are not universal.

FISH TANK — 2009; 123 min; at Landmark E Street.

IN HIS OTHER LIFE, AS A DIRECTOR, LUC BESSON has given interesting and significant roles to women. He even made a film about the ultimate French superheroine, Joan of Arc, starring then-girlfriend Milla Jovovich. As a globalist-action-flick producer-scenarist, however, Besson has little use for women. (His Transporter stuffed one of the world's most striking actresses, Shu Qi, into Jason Statham's trunk.) Besson's latest product, frenetically directed by District B13's Pierre Morel, actually has two notable female characters, but neither has a future as the star of her own Besson franchise.

As impersonal as Fish Tank is intimate, From Paris with Love is a white-boy romp, outfitted with casual racism and misogyny. The movie's first half is so chaotic that it comes as a surprise when the plot finally kicks in. This is one of those rare action flicks that pulls itself together, rather than fall apart, as it speeds its the final gunshot. It turns out that the story's twist can be partially anticipated from the film's name — a reference to From Russia with Love — but these days who would guess that a movie title could convey real information?

A bad-buddy/good-buddy picture, From Paris with Love begins by introducing super-smart but untested American agent James Reese (Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers doing a serviceable American accent). Reece works at the American Embassy, and lives a quiet, tasteful life — cue the cool jazz — with French girlfriend Caroline (Kasia Smutniak), a fledgling fashion designer who looks like a supermodel. (Too bad they didn't use the Auteurs's "New French Girlfriend" as Reece and Caroline's theme song.)

Reece thinks he wants to get his hands dirty, but is unprepared to be plunged into the Bessonian muck by new arrival Charlie Wax (John Travolta), a trigger-happy operative from some U.S. agency that's too secret to be mentioned. Reece watches in horror while Wax, an amiable parody of American crudity and brutality, blasts drug dealers and, eventually, terrorists. Bloody and absurd, the action is treated as black comedy, complete with a running-joke homage to Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

As for Caroline, no more can be said, except to note that From Russia with Love is about an affair that crosses what was then the world's most crucial ideological divide. The movie's other notable female character is a Hillary-like American bureaucrat, who's saved twice from being obliterated by terrorists, only to complain bitterly about the inconvenience. It would have been nice if this near-Hillary had stopped bitching and pulled out an Uzi — but that could have happened only in a film by the other Luc Besson.

FROM PARIS WITH LOVE — 2010; 95 min; at all the usual multiplexes.