Scrapper film review: Touching London film with great cast
High rise council estates have provided the setting for many independent British gems, like Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank or Joe Cornish’s Sci-fi Attack The Block. Scrapper does not scale those heights, but it brings fresh ideas to the formula.
It’s the story of Georgie (Lola Campbell), a 12 year old recently orphaned and managing to raise herself through a mixture of low level London crime and inventive deception. That is, until Jason (Harris Dickinson) turns up on her doorstep, claiming to be her father. The pair begrudgingly forge a bond, with secrets about both their pasts slowly emerging.
Showcasing a similar father-daughter dynamic as the Oscar nominated Aftersun, debut director Charlotte Regan takes a more hopeful approach to tough subject matter. The context may be grim, but we see inside the lives of the characters as they attempt to be more than the sum of their parts. For Georgie, that means a roguish existence avoiding foolish teachers and social workers so that she can raise herself.
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Not everything in the plan is believable: she keeps the social workers off her back by having the local shop worker record voice notes as her “uncle”. It keeps on the right side of fantasy by portraying The System as uncaring (teachers debate how long a child needs off to grieve), and filled with easily appeased authority figures.
Regan offsets these harsh realities through fantasy, such as animated segments feathering spiders, reality TV confessionals, and a heart-breaking narrative thread where Georgie ticks off the Five Stages of Grief like a to do list. Lola Campbell is the key to making it all work. Child-led films are a difficult prospect, having to place weighty themes on young shoulders. But her Artful Dodger energy matches Regan’s playfulness, as well as her co-star’s.
Dickinson plays Jason as Georgie’s opposite: an adult who hasn’t matured and seems lost in his sudden father figure role. There are some sharp tongued exchanges, before the third act unveils something sweeter. More light-hearted than other films of this type, Scrapper makes up for a lack of edge with a great cast and sincere sentiment.