Notes on…

Scrapper(2023)

Dir. Directed by Charlotte Regan

I went in trying to like this, but its handling of wildly different tones was just a little too jarring for me. It's not that a film can't be a gritty but whimsical meta-heavy comedy-drama riff on Paper Moon, it's just that it doesn't work in this particular instance… not least of all because the screenplay always steers away from seriously showing a malign side to any character. Still, I did love how Georgie's hearing aids are never referenced.

* *

Synopsis: A resourceful 12-year-old, who secretly lives alone in her flat in a working-class suburb of London, makes money stealing bikes with her best friend Ali and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. But when her estranged father turns up out of the blue, she's forced to confront reality.