‘Urchin' Review: Harris Dickinson's Fine Directorial Debut Bridges Social Realism and Surrealism

Yahoo

20-05-2025

You can learn a lot about an actor when they make their directorial debut. For better or worse, it reveals how they see themselves as an artist, sometimes far removed the image they've cultivated on screen. In the case of Harris Dickinson, however, his first venture behind the camera is fully consistent with his young but impressive acting career. The star who has largely eschewed profitable franchise pap for unusual independent and arthouse assignments shows through in 'Urchin,' a jagged, perceptive slice of life from London's grimier sidewalks, addressing a nationwide homelessness crisis with unassuming care and candor. Centered on a single young man ricocheting between prison, hostels and the streets, the film makes no claims to represent an entire disenfranchised demographic, but there's resonant human texture and political feeling in its close-up individual portrait.
Now 28 years old, Dickinson joins an emerging generation of British filmmakers who came of age against the U.K. government's punishing austerity program of the 2010s onward, with its accompanying reduction in welfare and social services, and aren't inclined toward a forgiving view. It's a group arguably more inclined than their immediate elders to take the mantle of 88-year-old Ken Loach, still by some margin British cinema's preeminent name in social-realist protest cinema. Like Laura Carreira's recent, superb 'On Falling,' 'Urchin' proudly bears the influence of Loach's unfussy observational gaze and plainspoken frustration with the world under view — so it's somewhat fitting that the film should premiere at Cannes, the veteran auteur's regular stomping ground, in the Un Certain Regard section. Indie distributors should take an interest, and not just on the basis of the director's celebrity.
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Where 'Urchin' diverges from the old-school Loachian playbook is in its few passages of tumbling surrealism, entering the addled freefall mindset of protagonist Mike (Frank Dillane) via kaleidoscopic digital imagery and dreamily incongruous visions — a gaping forest cave, a hushed gothic abbey — that stand in stark contrast to the film's rough-and-ready east London milieu. These unexpected flourishes may divide viewers, though they're not merely a decorative affectation, instead connoting the psychological lapses and blackouts that keep Mike on the same desperate rotation around society's fringes.
Though Dickinson himself takes a minor role as a fellow street denizen and frenemy of Mike's — apparently only after another actor fell through for the part — he exercises commendable humility in handing the lead role to Dillane, not to mention a canny eye for casting. The 'Harry Potter' and 'Fear the Walking Dead' alum, son of actor Stephen, is revelatory in his most substantial big-screen role to date, imbuing Mike with both the kind of wily charisma that makes people want to rescue him, and a self-destructive volatility that keeps repelling such efforts. We see both of these in action in an extended early scene that sees him disarm kindly middle-class professional Simon, a rare passerby who talks to him as a relative equal, and offers to buy him lunch. Mid-conversation, Mike abruptly assaults him and steals his wallet.
The attack lands him behind bars, not for the first time, with his seven-month jail stint an interstice covered by the first of Dickinson's vertiginous reality-break sequences. He emerges from it sober and conscientious, determined to finally stay clean as he takes a job as a commis chef in a low-end hotel, and a hostel room secured by brisk, no-nonsense social worker Nadia (Shonagh Marie) — who bluntly reminds him that as an able-bodied white man with a criminal record and a history of violence, he is not the system's top priority.
For a time, Mike holds it together, dutifully listening to platitudinous self-help tapes and befriending some cheery co-workers at the hotel — cue a tipsy karaoke performance of the optimistically titled Atomic Kitten hit 'Whole Again.' But his more erratic impulses eventually get the better of him, vaulting him into alternative employment as a litter collector, and an initially benign relationship with carefree immigrant drifter Andrea (Megan Northam) that sours when she inadvertently pulls him off the wagon with a dose (and then another, and another) of ketamine.
Ably navigating back-and-forth tonal shifts between hopeful everyday comedy and stomach-knotting anxiety, Dickinson's script resists overly tidy shaping, accepting one man's unreliable id as its primary motor — toward an ending that may seem unresolved, but is honest about the snakes-and-ladders trajectory faced by many in Mike's position as support networks steadily desert them. Propulsively and often sunnily shot by DP Josée Deshaies ('Passages') and edited by Rafael Torres Calderón with an efficiency that still allows for the lax diversions and conversations of an unmoored, unhurried existence, 'Urchin' hints gently throughout at the brighter life that could await Mike if he ever climbs all the way out of the abyss. Still, Dickinson's starkly effective debut makes no false promises.
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