‘Scrapper’ movie review: Charlotte Regan’s light, refreshing debut
Thanks to the films of Ken Loach and Shane Meadows, people outside of Britain must assume that the skies of England are permanently darkened by overcast clouds and the streets crash with the tumbleweed of hollow Special Brew cans. Whilst this vision is partly accurate, in contemporary cinema, England has never looked so colourful, with debut creatives instilling their own optimistic vision with such films as Raine Allen Miller’s Rye Lane, Nida Manzoor’s Polite Society, and the newest addition to the roster, Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper.
A hit at the Sundance Film Festival, winning the Grand Jury Prize, Regan’s debut is exactly the kind of twee drama that the influential annual event laps up. Featuring the Triangle of Sadness star Harris Dickinson alongside a number of young debutants, Scrapper is Loach-lite, telling the story of a young girl living alone following the death of her mother, whose life is turned on its head with the return of her father.
We say Loach-lite in terms of its social realist subject matter, but this comparison is a little inaccurate on the whole. Attempting to reflect the magical viewpoint of her young protagonist, played with endearing curiosity by newcomer Lola Campbell, the world of Scrapper doesn’t bother itself with mimicking reality, being far more interested in telling a vibrant, refreshing coming-of-age tale.
Taking notes from the zippy comedy of Taika Waititi and the saturated colour palette of the filmography of Sean Baker, Scrapper feels like a distinctly new voice in the landscape of British filmmaking. An evidently passionate debut from Regan, her first feature work, following years of short film projects, is stuffed with heart and a clear strive for originality.
Indeed, Scrapper feels like a debut film for better and for worse, displaying unfettered creativity that feels both invigoratingly honest but also somewhat strained. Moments of twee ingenuity are scattered throughout but never truly feel emotionally purposeful, feeling like afterthoughts that are tossed in purely for aesthetic purposes rather than flourishes of inspiration that feed directly back into the composition of the characters.
The coloured rows of council houses breathe life into the world of protagonist Georgie (Campbell), and for much of the film’s opening, it is a joy to explore the world alongside her and her friend Ali (Alin Uzun). The pair make for a formidable duo and are most certainly promising comedic talents for the future, but they are unsurprisingly unable to carry the weight of Regan’s narrative, with much of this heavy lifting being done by the commanding presence of Dickenson a third way through the film.
Still, whilst time and effort are spent fleshing out Georgie, a disproportionate amount of time is spent with Dickenson’s Jason, who is something of an erratic enigma, constantly going back on the character who was set up one scene previously. Perhaps this was Regan’s intention. Scrapper is, after all, a film shot from the magical perspective of Georgie, but Jason’s lack of complexity makes for a sadly stale finale.
With scatterings of bold, energetic storytelling, Regan’s debut feature is certainly a refreshing one, even if it isn’t a truly refined piece of cinema.
