Flasz On Film

Earlier this year we saw the arrival of Aftersun, a soulful coming-of-age story about a flawed dad stepping up to the plate while wrestling with his inner demons and a suitable companion piece to Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere. However, nobody said that there wasn’t enough room for another movie to co-exist in this space.  

Enter Scrapper, written and directed by Charlotte Regan in her feature debut where she introduces us to Georgie (Lola Campbell), a twelve-year-old self-assured rapscallion who lives on her own after her mum died. She’s got everything figured out: she gets money from stealing bikes, fends off social workers with pre-recorded messages and inventive phone tricks… and slowly works through the five stages of grief. That is until her estranged dad (Harris Dickinson) enters the picture and disrupts everything. As a result, the two must get to know each other and learn to live together, which will inevitably involve Georgie forgiving her dad for abandoning the family and eventually figuring out how to move on from a tragedy that should never have happened to a young child.  

What unfolds is quite ingenious because Charlotte Regan’s movie refuses to be defined by genre expectations or superficial similarities the narrative might present. Sure, mentioning Scrapper and Aftersun in the same sentence may be informative and in many ways intriguing, but the two films never encroach on each other despite dabbling in overlapping thematic spaces. In fact, they are quite complementary in that Aftersun grounds its conversation with the viewer in subdued observational realism reminiscent of Sofia Coppola, while Charlotte Regan uses the template of kitchen sink realism as a foundation for a more fantastical – dare I say whimsical – departure into territories where movies like Beasts of the Southern Wild roamed before.  

In fact, Behn Zeitlin’s movie is probably the most compatible companion piece to Scrapper, especially if we think about what Regan’s story is trying to accomplish. It doesn’t necessarily set out with a singular mission propelling it forward. It’s not Fish Tank. It’s a movie that uses the perspective of the child not so much to indict the social security network in Britain outright – even though it inescapably does so by virtue of simply putting a camera in a destitute council estate and pressing “record” – but to put you in Georgie’s mind and let you experience exactly how she contextualizes her predicament, how she explains away her hardships and how her unbreakable youthful spirit is both a genuinely organic armour defending her from collapsing and a front she puts up knowingly, because deep in her heart of hearts she is aware of the tragedy that has befallen her.  

Now, that’s a movie. And it is one that would be impossible to pull off without Lola Campbell’s central performance that rises to the bar left by Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon. Thanks to her absolutely towering and equally naturalistic movement in front of Regan’s camera, Scrapper rises to deserve the label of a modern classic. It is, simply put, a wonderful movie to experience as it captures so much using so little effort. Depending on your own personal perspective you adopt as you watch it, Scrapper will maybe look a bit more like a screw-up-dad-rising-up movie akin to Somewhere and Aftersun. And maybe there is something inherently autobiographical about Georgie’s travails, too. Who knows? If you lean slightly differently, you will lose yourself in the childlike fantasy of Georgie’s own unique perspective that ultimately adds up to a powerful and affirming exploration of grief and forgiveness. And if you tilt your head just a bit more to the left, you’ll be able to notice the kitchen sink grit driving a stake through the cold heart of Tory Britain. 

However, if you move about in your seat and experiment for a few minutes, you will be able to find an angle that captures all three. You shall then experience Scrapper as a hybrid of Somewhere, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Fish Tank, which is how I managed to experience it. It is a truly magnificent piece that’s as sweet as it is bitter and as whimsical as it is serious. As colourful as it is bleak. And as tragic as it is hopeful. Not too often do we get to see a newcomer burst onto the stage with enough confidence and bravado – kind of like Georgie, actually – to fill the space of a feature-length theatrical experience with genuine magic reserved for the works of high-brow literature, but somehow delivered in a way that is accessible to you, me and everyone willing to fall in love with Georgie’s journey.  

But the trick is in the word “willing”. Scrapper is a movie that, despite its intrinsic prowess and an absolutely overpowering energy, might do nothing for you if you don’t let it into your heart. To follow on from Louis Pasteur’s motto “fortune favours the prepared mind”, Charlotte Regan’s movie can only work on full whack if you give it a chance. If you fail or refuse to do so, you may only emerge with (hopefully at least) genuine admiration towards Lola Campbell. This movie is in some fashion an antidote to modern cynicism pervading our life experiences, as it openly invites us to laugh, to cry, and then to laugh through our tears. It invites us to be vulnerable, just as it presents the characters as vulnerable creatures. Once this mutual trust is established, Scrapper will blossom in your heart, and you shall remember it as a colourful, whimsical and unabashedly earnest piece resplendent with fundamental human emotions and awash with heart-stopping imagery. 

Scrapper is a modern fairy tale that successfully brightens the gloomy world we live in without whisking us away into its never-never-land. It makes us look at our everyday reality a little bit differently and forces us to remember that even life’s most horrifying tragedies can be overcome. It’s a wonderful film made by wonderful souls.