Georgie (Lola Campbell) turns to petty crime with the help of her friend, Ali (Alin Uzun). (Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber)
By Richard Ades
Scrapper’s title is the perfect description of Georgie (Lola Campbell), a 12-year-old struggling to survive in a working-class suburb of London.
Having recently lost her mother and with no father in sight, the girl scrounges for money by stealing bikes with the help of her friend, Ali (Alin Uzun). She then tries to fence them to a local shop owner by arguing that soon everyone will want one because the Tour de France is imminent.
Even when Georgie and Ali are caught stealing by a bike’s owner, she manages to talk her way out of trouble by pretending they were just making sure it was mechanically sound. She also succeeds in keeping concerned social workers at bay by convincing them she’s living with an uncle rather than on her own.
As depicted by first-time actor Campbell and first-time writer-director Charlotte Regan, Georgie seems unfazed by anything that comes her way. That is, until a man named Jason (Harris Dickinson) shows up and claims to be her long-lost father. That sets off a wave of paranoid suspicions (Is he a vampire? Is he a gangster?), along with recriminations toward the parent she accuses of deserting her.
“At least he’s here now,” Ali argues, leading to a fallout with his mercurial friend.
Jason (Harris Dickinson) tries to mend fences with Georgie (Lola Campbell), the daughter he never knew.
Will Jason stay around long enough to accept the parenting role he abandoned as a young man? Will the resentful and independent Georgie let her guard down long enough to let him try?
A situation like this seems guaranteed to generate pathos and sentimentality, but filmmaker Regan relies on quirky humor to avoid the former and to head off the latter as long as possible. Reportedly, she also relied heavily on improvisation, which explains why some scenes have a freewheeling quality.
Though the resulting film is a bit uneven, a winning cast keeps the story interesting. Uzun and Dickinson are fine as Georgie’s faithful friend and belatedly concerned father, while Campbell is irresistible as the girl who falls back on her ample wits to survive one of the worst losses a child can face.
Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)
Scrapper (no MPAA rating) can be seen in select theaters and is scheduled to run Sept. 8-14 at Columbus’s Gateway Film Center.
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