Le géant égoïste

"If you hate me so much then how come you come back then?" "'Cause I'm thick, like everyone says."

A terrific grimy drama inspired by the Oscar Wilde short story "The Selfish Giant". This movie is raw, unsettling, heartbreaking and loaded with social commentaries. I love this movie. It made me think, it made me laugh and at the end I was bawling like a baby.

This film is stunning - a visually powerful glimpse into a savage, precarious world, with humour and tenderness.

It can't just be reduced to a political diatribe, although the post-industrial setting is bleak and the poverty grinding. Mainly it's the story of a young lad's struggle towards adulthood, ahead of his time and in tough circumstances, as he learns the hard way what it is to be a grown-up.

The echoes of 'Kes' are obvious, but with the destruction of that old industrial world the characters too are ambiguous and troubled. Arbor is a complex mix of ruthlessness, cheekiness and wit. We see his character develop from being a cocky little tawt to something altogether more complicated and touching...

The Selfish Giant shows basically how capitalism works: not by making an academic movie with statistical figures, but by telling the highly capturing dramatic story of two teenagers in an English community who need to collect scrap to make ends meet.

They are no longer motivated in studying, because the bills need to be payed by the end of the month. At school they are expelled because of their frustrated behavior. Their family is in ruin due to the stress caused by not earning enough money.

In their quest for scrap they see how the best thief's also gain the most money. So eventually they turn to criminal behavior. Not by choice, but by necessity. Making money becomes separated from doing 'the right thing' to do.

The director does a good job not telling this as a straight forward moral tale, nor using sentimental 'tricks', nor trying to pretend that all ends well. But telling it as an illustration on a human level in an ordinary community where the downside of our economic model is not theory but reality.

Based loosely on the Oscar Wilde story, THE SELFISH GIANT is set in contemporary Bradford, north England, and focuses on the lives of two boys, both of whom are misfits. Arbor (Conner Chapman) cannot fit in to high school life, and prefers to spend his time collecting scrap metal to help his impoverished family. His friend Swifty (Shaun Thomas) is emotionally softer, but proves brilliant at dealing with the prize horse of local dealer Kitten (Sean Gilder). With its washed-out colors and lengthy shots focusing on a grim post-industrial landscape, Clio Barnard's film looks at life on the margins, where families quite literally have to sell everything in order to survive. Despite their hardships, Arbor and Swifty forge a close friendship - so close, in fact, that we are both shocked and moved when tragedy strikes at the end of the film. THE SELFISH GIANT has strong links to Ken Loach's KES in its portrayal of contemporary working-class culture. The dialog is harsh and uncompromising, while the two central performances are memorable. There are certain rough edges - Gilder's Kitten comes across as rather two-dimensional, while his wife Mary (Lorraine Ashbourne) is almost too good to be true - but the film is definitely worth watching more than once.

I have to confess I have a 'soft spot' for realist British drama and any film featuring scrapyards and neglected locations nearly always gets a high rating for me.

Having seen Clio Barnard's previous film 'The Arbor' a couple of years back, I was curious to see her next feature and it's well worth the price of admission. Her style and subject matter here remind me of Andrea Arnold's 'Fish Tank' and also a little of Rufus Norris's dysfunctional family in 'Broken', both of which were high on my score sheet.

The two young leads are outstanding, even if their strong northern accents are sometimes hard to follow for me, a southerner, and the portrayal of exclusion, its consequences and repercussions is handled brilliantly by the film makers as you are immersed in their world for what feels far longer than the 90 minutes running time.

See it and appreciate that British drama is alive and kicking. I look forward to her next project.