‘Urchin’ review: Harris Dickinson directs an elevated study of addiction

Dir/scr: Harris Dickinson. UK. 2025. 99mins

Mike (Frank Dillane), a rough-sleeper in London, is trapped in a spiralling downward cycle of substance abuse. Following a jail sentence, he makes an attempt to show his life round. And for some time, it appears to be working. He has a mattress in a hostel, a job, a group of self-help cassettes. However sure habits are arduous to shake and, for on daily basis sober, there are triggers and temptations ready to journey him up. It seems like a punishingly bleak premise, however there’s an sudden levity and moments of arresting magnificence to be discovered on this distinctive directorial debut from the actor Harris Dickinson (who additionally seems within the movie in a small supporting function).

Boldly artistic

It’s an auspicious first characteristic from Babygirl star Dickinson, who beforehand made a number of quick movies together with 2003, a couple of younger soldier’s last day of deployment. It’s additionally a private work, rooted in a neighborhood he is aware of first-hand by means of his volunteer work with homeless charities in North London. With Urchin, he balances a respectful authenticity surrounding dependancy and life on the streets with some boldly artistic visible gadgets. This mixture elevates the image – this gritty social realist character examine is spiked with hanging and sudden detours, together with a quick odyssey down the drain in Mike’s jail bathe.

Dickinson’s appearing commitments – he’s set to play John Lennon in Sam Mendes’ mammoth four-film Beatles undertaking – could imply that we should wait some time to see what’s subsequent for him as a author/director. Within the quick time period, nonetheless, Urchin is more likely to be a title of appreciable curiosity for distributors and competition programmers following its debut in Un Sure Regard.

Whereas the movie ought to entice curiosity for Dickinson as a author and director, it is usually a showcase for the appreciable appearing skills of Dillane, who’s great within the central function and barely off display screen. Even at all-time low – and Mike spends extra time than most at all-time low – there’s a mercurial, magnetic high quality to the character. He’s a dandy scarecrow of a person, with hair that sprouts in wild, untamed angles and garments that grasp off his whip-thin, undernourished body.

Whereas Mike is within the grip of his drug behavior, there’s not way more to the character than the overwhelming, savage want for the subsequent repair – dependancy has a manner of stripping away the meat of a character till it’s a meagre, depleted wraith. However having shaken the behavior throughout his newest stint in jail, the true Mike emerges into the world, like a blinking, curious creature crawling from a cave after an extended hibernation.

There’s one thing endearingly childlike about Mike, the sort of puckish naivety that you’d assume ought to have been floor down by the arduous truths of tough sleeping. “I’ve an concept for a limousine firm,” he says brightly to the stony probation officer who has been assigned to his case. Dickinson’s screenplay astutely refuses to fill in Mike’s backstory – the movie, just like the character, exists solely within the current (understandably, Mike finds it simpler to clean out the unhealthy selections in his previous).

We be taught, from a throwaway remark, that he was adopted; we assume, from a cellphone name to a weeping lady after his arrest for aggravated theft, that Mike’s patterns of self-destructive behaviour have pushed a wedge between him and his adoptive dad and mom. It appears possible, given Mike’s chipper, virtually giddy manner following a night of karaoke with work colleagues (Atomic Kitten’s ’You Can Make Me Complete Once more’ is a poignant alternative of tune) and the emotional crash that follows shortly afterwards, that his psychological well being points would possibly embrace bipolar dysfunction. However this isn’t overtly said. Mike’s rattled, chaotic lifestyle is mirrored within the episodic construction of the screenplay, and the intentionally fragmented modifying.

Dickinson teases with a glimmer of hope, and the prospect of a relationship with Andrea (Megan Northam), a coolly self-sufficient French lady with a transformed van and a plan for the long run. However there’s an inevitability within the path that the story follows – this can be a movie about repeated patterns of self-destruction in any case. The ending is downbeat, however like a lot within the movie, it’s infused with an sudden magnificence.