Film review: Scrapper's buzzy father-daughter story rides on gritty performances behind candy-coloured surface
Fresh-feeling debut from Britain’s Charlotte Regan is as moving as it is deadpan-hilarious
Harrison Dickinson and Lola Campbell are standouts in Scrapper.
Scrapper is at VIFF Centre from September 1 to 7
ENERGIZED AND ENDEARING, Scrapper borrows from the palette of candy necklaces: British council flats in pink, yellow, and sherbet-green, bubblegum-hued pillows, and mint wallpaper. But what gives this film its punch is the steely toughness behind that playfully sweet surface.
Young British writer-director Charlotte Regan’s stunning debut rides not just on the unaffected grit of child actor Lola Campbell as Georgie, but also on Harrison Dickinson—transformed from his model swagger in Triangle of Sadness. As her awkward but affectionate estranged father Jason, he sports a bad bleach job, gold chains, and baggy shorts. He’s a perennial man-child who needs his wise-beyond-her-years daughter as much as she needs him.
Georgie’s single mother has died, and the 12-year-old has fooled North London social services into thinking she’s being cared for by an uncle, when she’s actually subsisting alone in her flat. She scrubs dishes, pays for bills by stealing bikes, and occasionally even goes to school—all while grieving in her own idiosyncratic and intensely private way. Her only support is bestie Ali—some of the best scenes find her hanging with her “trackie”-wearing pal, talking shit about vampires and gravy, and playing chase around the projects’ grass.
She’s less than thrilled at the arrival of Jason, who’s been chilling with his buddies in “Ibi-th-a” for the past decade. He tries to parent, and it’s amusing watching his attempts, but they usually end in a clumsy fail: trying to switch a lost molar out from beneath her pillow for money, he scares the living crap out of a child whose mom never taught her about a tooth fairy. Finally he resorts to doling out the life lessons he knows best—such as the importance of scraping the serial numbers off bikes you’ve stolen.
It’s often hilarious—but also a testament to the tone where you feel the aching void that the loss of her mother has left, and the sense that Jason genuinely cares about Georgie, without it ever needing to be addressed directly. To Georgie’s credit, she holds her dad to task: watch the pain bubble up behind his bad-boy grin when she asks “How come you didn’t want to know me 12 years ago?”
The goofiness, the scrappiness, and the playfulness may leave you hopelessly unprepared for how moving the film becomes.
Throw in direct-camera addresses from everyone from numb social workers to pink-adorned girl gangs, a magically discombobulating electro-acoustic score, and pop-up chatter by a chorus of household arachnids, and you have the first film in recent memory that feels legitimately fresh and ballsy.
With her buzzy storytelling ideas, hypercaffeinated visual style, and ability to balance deadpan with emotional heft, Regan has talent to burn. As for Georgie, she’ll be just fine, thank you.
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