Scrapper takes up the mantle of Aftersun (review)

Charlotte Regan’s film succeeds where so many other feel good movies have failed.

In an England that seems isolated from the rest of the world, a 12-year-old girl copes with boredom by stealing bicycles, fighting with the neighborhood girls and procrastinating in a large apartment. A large apartment where she lives alone without the knowledge of social services since the premature death of her mother, the only loving and loved one in this small town with false bucolic charm where she (survives). And when her teenage-looking father comes into her life to regain control, she turns against this man who abandoned her just after her birth.

With photo Molly Manning Walker (director of How to have sex), scrapper succeeds where so many others feel good movies failed: by choosing not to judge her characters, Charlotte Regan ends up making them sunny, larger than life, thereby masking the grayness that surrounds their status as left behind. Debutante Lola Campbell illuminates this perfectly melancholy film which navigates with agility between the tearful and the funny, with the highlight being a magnificent complicity shared between the actress and Harris Dickinson, a true chameleon who can also play the superficial idiot in Ruben Östlund as poorly educated daddies in small indie productions.

scrapper finally takes up the torch of Aftersun by Charlotte Wells, this time opening a window into the future for her characters, while letting us think that British cinema has not been this powerful and rich for a number of years.