Scrap­per – first-look review

Char­lotte Regan has long been a promis­ing tal­ent on the shorts and music video cir­cuit, with her film Stand­by nom­i­nat­ed for a BAF­TA in 2017. She makes the leap to fea­tures with Scrap­per – a charm­ing, effer­ves­cent sto­ry about grief set on a hous­ing estate in East Lon­don that turns the kitchen sink genre on its head, craft­ing a bright­ly-coloured world of pos­si­bil­i­ty and hope.

12-year-old Georgie (new­com­er Lola Camp­bell) lives on her own, fol­low­ing the death of her moth­er. She’s craft­ed an elab­o­rate ruse to fool social ser­vices into think­ing she’s liv­ing with her uncle, and spends her time with best mate Ali (Alin Uzun) nick­ing bikes to sell as scrap in order to put food on the table. She’s hard as nails and doesn’t need any help from any­one, thanky­ou­very­much – so when her estranged father Jason (Har­ris Dick­in­son) turns up on her doorstep, fresh off the plane from Ibiza where he was work­ing as a club rep, Georgie doesn’t want any­thing to do with him.

She’s par­tic­u­lar­ly resis­tant to the idea of Jason par­ent­ing her, argu­ing that she was doing just fine before he turned up. Jason isn’t thrilled about the new arrange­ment either, still a kid him­self at heart, but he sticks around, attempt­ing to make a go of it despite Georgie’s loud protestations.

Com­par­isons to Char­lotte Wells’ After­sun – anoth­er UK debut about a pre­teen con­nect­ing with her dad – may seem appro­pri­ate, but while Wells’ film blurred the line between mem­o­ry and real­i­ty with a pro­tag­o­nist attempt­ing to make sense of her father’s death as an adult, Scrap­per is per­haps a more mat­ter-of-fact nar­ra­tive. Georgie’s grief is swal­lowed deep down, and while she clear­ly miss­es her mum, it seems she’s either unwill­ing or unable to process the loss, instead opt­ing to make her­self imper­vi­ous to the cru­el­ties of the world around her.

She retreats into her own world, which is depict­ed through snap­shots of talk­ing spi­ders and mock­u­men­tary-style footage of the local peo­ple that know her. Mean­while, her big project is con­struct­ing a large struc­ture out of scrap met­al in her mother’s bed­room, that she keeps locked at all times. These flour­ish­es of mag­i­cal real­ism tem­per the rather grim real­i­ty of Georgie’s sit­u­a­tion, in which she’s been failed by the state repeat­ed­ly and left to fend for her­self, as does the vibrant cin­e­matog­ra­phy, a refresh­ing change of page from the per­va­sive grim­ness with which British cul­ture usu­al­ly depicts work­ing class sto­ries. More­so than After­sun, Scrap­per feels rem­i­nis­cent of a Jacque­line Wil­son sto­ry – required read­ing for any British tween – and Camp­bell plays Lola with a spiky deter­mi­na­tion which stays just the right side of precocious.

Her chem­istry with Dick­in­son is delight­ful as the pair size each oth­er up and attempt to nav­i­gate their strange new rela­tion­ship (one scene in a local train sta­tion is a par­tic­u­lar high­light) and Dick­in­son adds to the grow­ing pile of evi­dence that he’s a true gen­er­a­tional tal­ent, all big, vul­ner­a­ble eyes and moody scowls. While Scrap­per might not have the most orig­i­nal con­ceit, it’s a sweet, heart­felt take on the dif­fi­cul­ty of father-daugh­ter bond­ing, and pro­cess­ing grief when you’ve made your­self hard against the ills of the world. Regan has announced her­self as a fea­ture film­mak­er with style, and this ener­getic feel-good film is a love­ly cure for the win­ter blues.