4.10.23
Scrapper has a refreshing sharpness regarding the familiar father-daughter dramas we have seen more often in recent years. Anchored by newcomer Lola Campbell’s spiky and unsentimental performance as 12-year-old protagonist Georgie as she bonds with her absentee father played capably by Harris Dickinson, it’s a tale which starts simply but becomes deeper and more involving as we start to consider Georgie’s post-grief mental state.
Cinematographer Molly Manning Walker, known more recently for her directorial debut How to Have Sex, (which I have heard is excellent) bathes the film in a whimsical pastel palette, which illuminates a soulless council estate into a colourful playground for Georgie to roam in. However, the bright aesthetic jars against the grim working-class realities of Georgie’s world. Director Charlotte Regan shows promise in her debut, yet struggles to reconcile the tone, often coming off flippant and forced in the quest for meaning. As we sympathise with Georgie, it feels like she is held back from developing as a character, especially when the fantasy elements like her towering scrap metal sculpture feel at odds with the harsh truths that creep in.
The comparisons to Aftersun are evident, but although moments of visual imagination shine through in Scrapper – a cotton candy bedroom here, a makeshift rocket there – the emotional resonance falters despite Lola Campbell’s confident and mature performance. The fragmented tone wavers tonally between gritty drama and whimsical escape, but glimmers of promise peek through in the magnetic leads and visual flair. As an introspective two-hander, Scrapper gives us slivers of potential for Regan to fashion into something more cohesive in her future endeavours which I shall be keen to visit.