Maddie Stone looks like a normal schoolgirl, but she is a beast on the playground. Selling sweets at good prices, she has a profitable business which controls its turf. When her father is taken to jail and needs bail, Maddie pushes her business harder to make more, faster in order to bail her out – and in doing so comes into conflict with others in the game.
There is a certain comedic fantasy element to this film, and it sets it up well to contrast but yet complement a gritty and realistic core. The fantasy element is that of the streetwise kid where they are impossibly more together than they would be (almost like a version of Brick). At the same time the device of selling sweets like they were drugs allows for an element of being removed from a real situation. Against this though we have the jailing of a father – a bad one it seems, but we do not feel that through Maddie. Instead we feel the connection to him through the violence of her world; she is older than her situation allows – or at least she is angrier and quicker to violence than she should be. The father is behind this, and in her emotion, we see her going the same way.
It is excellent in how it plays out, with an urgency and heart. The craft is strong here, and it is rewarded with a very good performance from Jessica Barden – who I had not seen before I think, but certainly made an impression here. Smart, engaging, brutal, and very much worth seeing.
