Georgie, a dreamy 12-year-old girl, lives happily alone in her London flat, filling it with magic. Suddenly, her estranged father turns up and forces her to confront reality.

‘Scrapper’, Charlotte Regan’s feature film debut is a sweet and charming drama about a father/daughter relationship that develops over the course of this movie’s brief less than 90 minutes runtime. It is essentially a two-hander between Harris Dickinson and Lola Campbell, who are both excellent, as they get to know one another on the London council estate where they live. It will naturally get comparisons with Charlotte Wells ‘Aftersun’ (and here I am perpetuating them!) because of its focus on a father/daughter relationship, but this is a movie focused on the future and not the past, as ‘Aftersun’ was.

‘Scrapper’ centres on Georgie (the brilliant newcomer Lola Campbell), a feisty 12-year-old who is trying to come to terms with the death of her mother, while devising schemes to make money and avoid social services taking her in. This existence is interrupted by the arrival of her absentee father Jason (Harris Dickinson), who she has never met before on account of him moving to Ibiza before she was born. In many respects we will learn he is just as childlike as Georgie is. Harris Dickinson is a young actor building an impressive resume where he is showing off his range – he’s gone from a posh actor in ‘See How They Run’, to a model in ‘Triangle of Sadness’, to the role he plays in ‘Scrapper’. At only 27, he has a big future ahead of him.

One of the things I liked about ‘Scrapper’ was that Regan makes us empathise with both characters, despite Jason clearly not being a good father. It’s the desire to be better that shines through and the best moments of the movie come when Jason and Georgie find a way to connect and edge just a little bit forward in their path to having a proper relationship. If I had a slight criticism of ‘Scrapper’ at all it’s that it I felt it was a little too upbeat given the premise, but it would be unfair to be too hard on a debut as impressive as this.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Charlotte Regan

Starring: Lola Campbell, Harris Dickinson and Alin Uzun

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt8649252/