Scrapper (2023 film)

Scrapper is a 2023 British comedy drama film written and directed by Charlotte Regan in her feature debut. It stars Lola Campbell, Alin Uzun and Harris Dickinson and was produced by BBC Film, BFI and DMC Film.

The film premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and was released in cinemas in the United Kingdom on 25 August 2023. It received positive reviews and got 14 nominations at the 2023 British Independent Film Awards. It was also named one of the top 10 independent films of 2023 by the National Board of Review.

Plot
Georgie has been living alone since her mother Vicky died, stealing bikes to pay for food and pretending to social services that she's living with her uncle. Only her best - and only - friend, Ali, knows the truth. Georgie believes that she is working her way through the stages of grief, but Ali, noting that she refuses to let her home change in any way from how her mother left it, says she isn't. Georgie comforts herself by watching a video she recorded on her phone of herself and Vicky playing together.

Georgie's summer holiday plans are thrown into disarray when her estranged father, Jason, arrives unexpectedly. Jason forces his way into the home, threatening to reveal Georgie's secret to the social services when she tells him to get out.

Jason, who has been living in Spain selling nightclub tickets, easily wins over Ali. But Georgie - who worries that he may be a gangster or some other kind of violent criminal - is not swayed, especially after finding a bullet in one of his pockets. For his part, Jason is confused and intrigued by Georgie's refusal to let him enter a padlocked room in the home.

Jason attempts to reach out to Georgie by helping her scrape the serial number off a stolen bike she is respraying, but any trust between them is lost that night when she steals his phone and goes through his photographs, and he responds in anger.

The next day Georgie and Ali fall out after Ali defends Jason, and Georgie realises that she doesn't have anyone else in her life. She returns home to find that Jason has cooked dinner; while they're eating, one of her baby teeth falls out. That night, Jason sneaks into Georgie's room, but she wakes up. He explains that he was going to take her tooth from under her pillow and slip some money under it, under the guise of being the tooth fairy, and is surprised to learn that she doesn't believe in that idea. He attempts to give Georgie the money anyway, but she refuses.

Georgie and Jason head out to steal bikes, with Jason acting as a lookout, until a brush with the police leads to a chase. The pair escape the police, but Georgie loses her phone in the chaos, only realising that evening when they're back home. The pair blame each other and Georgie storms out into the night to search for the phone. A girl from school spots her and makes fun of her, and in a rage, Georgie beats her up. That night, Georgie sleeps in the padlocked room, where she pictures a huge tower made of scrap metal stretching up into the sky.

The following morning Jason takes Georgie out metal detecting in a field where he has planted a bracelet for her. He explains that it was his favourite hobby as a boy, and shows her the bullet she'd found in his belongings previously, explaining that he picked it up metal detecting and has held onto it ever since. On the way back he buys Georgie a cake, but she leaves it on the doorstep of the girl she'd beaten up. At home, she explains to Jason what had happened and he goes to the girl's house, where he upsets her mother by offering money as an apology.

That night he cuts the padlock and enters Georgie's private room. Inside he sees she has built a tower out of scrap metal, fantasising about building a tower tall enough to reach her mother in Heaven. When Georgie wakes up, she finds Jason has gone, leaving behind his mobile phone and instructions to listen to the answerphone message. She does: it's a recording of Vicky before she had died, begging Jason to come home and be a father to Georgie.

Georgie searches fruitlessly for Jason until she eventually finds him at a playground near her home, playing football with some boys. He says that he had planned to run away but couldn't go through with it; he also says that he'd wanted to tell Georgie about the answerphone message but was too cowardly. Georgie admits that she needs someone in her life, and Jason offers to step up and be her father. He warns her that he'll make mistakes - she says that she will too.

In the epilogue, we learn that Jason has contacted the social services, who are no wiser to the fact that Georgie's uncle never existed; Georgie and Jason are still stealing bikes and getting on well with one another; and the girl Georgie beat up is actually happy about it because she got two weeks off school. The final scene of the film shows Jason, Georgie and Ali repainting the living room of the house.

Production
Regan says that she and producer Theo Barrowclough wanted to make an "imperfect film that took risks". They wanted to give "the kids control of the film and for it to feel as messy as Georgie's mind." They were inspired by Taika Waititi's films like Boy, in which the character occasionally talks to the camera.

Principal photography took place in East London in mid-2021. Regan said that the Limes Farm housing estate in Chigwell was chosen for because of the "sense of community, where all the balconies look out on to where the kids play." Because, she says, "you don't get [those estates] in London much any more" the filmmakers had to "go a little bit further out to look for it."

Actor Harris Dickinson had previously worked with writer and director Regan and producer Barrowclough on the 2019 short film Oats & Barley. Dickinson told Deadline that he "really wanted to work with those guys again. I read the script and liked the story and saw Lola's tape and thought it would be an interesting thing to do." Funding came from DMC Film, BFI, BBC Films, Great Point Media, and Creative England.

In May 2022, France-based company Charades picked up the film to handle worldwide distributing rights. In February 2023, Charades revealed the rights had been sold to Picturehouse (UK) and Madman Entertainment (Australia), among others.

Release
Scrapper premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Scrapper was released in theaters on 25 August 2023.

Scrapper was released on DVD by Kino Lorber on 7 November 2023.

Critical response
Leslie Felperin in The Hollywood Reporter praised the performance of the leads, saying Dickinson "brings soulfulness to his rapscallion hitherto-absentee dad Jason, and total newcomer Lola Campbell, who brings natural comic timing to her turn as 12-year-old protagonist Georgie". Damon Wise in Deadline Hollywood also mentioned the two leads, saying: "Scrapper is essentially a two-hander, since the fat-free plot is essentially the two getting to know each other and finding out whether they might even like each other… Campbell [is] something of a find, in a spiky role that brings a refreshing, unsentimental edge to this after-Aftersun story". Adding: "It's also good to see a kitchen-sink drama that doesn't take itself overly seriously, but the downside of that is that Scrapper sometimes seems a little flippant, given that, smart as she is, our plucky heroine is still a vulnerable child, all alone in the world. Still, it's early days in Regan's career, and it will be interesting to see what other kinds of stories and genres she has in her offbeat sights".

Variety writer Guy Lodge highlighted the pastel coloured palette of the film, which "offers a sunnier take on familiar kitchen-sink territory, but is occasionally a touch too cute". He described the work of director of photography Molly Manning Walker as "vibrant, stock-shifting lensing" which "deftly negotiates the film's toggling impulses between social and magic realism". Production designer Elena Muntoni is said to strike "a clever balance between mundanely escapist decorative flourishes — like the cotton-candy clouds painted on a bedroom wall — and Georgie's actual flights of fantasy, like the scrap-metal tower she builds to the sky in a locked spare room. Reality eventually makes cruel but necessary intrusions in her life, and in Regan's film too: Both are stronger for the disruption."

In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw mentioned Regan as one of the best debuts in film of 2023.