Urchin – Film Review
by Hugh Maguire

Director – Harris Dickinson
Writer – Harris Dickinson
Stars – Diane Axford, Angela Bain, Lacey Bond

As an exploration of homelessness and its impact on individuals, Urchin is hard to beat.  In Mike, the almost gamine-like central character, we are taken on a trip to the harsh reality of life on London’s streets.  In the post-COVID world of a cashless populace, begging has become almost pointless, or at best more challenging. There is no small change at the bottom of a pocket.   It is a bleak world – but one also with everyday flashes of humour, relationships – albeit fleeting ones, and insights into the determination to survive.

In Urchin, all of this is accompanied by a Ken Loach-like insight into the frustrations of bureaucracy and the ‘system’.  One thinks of Loach’s I, Daniel Blake (2016).  In those same years, Pat Kinevane’s stunning Silent (2012) brought the audience into the potentially fantastic world of the homeless.  Those we pass by, with averted gaze, can have complex and indeed rich hidden lives.  The back story to how, when and why they came to appear like a crumpled mass on a pavement, with worldly goods held together in shopping bags, is potentially complex and insightful.  Indeed, it can be a mirror of our own circumstances where we are reminded of the sixteenth-century Reformer John Bradford’s well-known dictum: ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’

This same terrain is traversed in Urchin with a compelling central performance.   Where Kinevane softened the tale with stylish camp humour, the director here throws in all too believable everyday moments, which bring a smile to the face.  The subject, Mike, is clearly likeable and intelligent, but also very damaged with flashes of unpleasant arrogance.  The character weaves seamlessly from one mood to another – a sense that he deserves help and kindness shifts quickly to his being a bit of an annoying prat who needs a slap.  It is all too credible!  Living rough on the streets of London, we discern that there is clearly a dark back story – but it is never articulated.  A recurring image of a deep cave suggests some deep-seated sense of isolation and abandonment.  An occasional glimpse of a ghost-like elderly woman (mother/grandmother?) suggests a link with a deceased person.  We are left to make our own conclusions.  There are many seeking to help Mike, but being moody and impulsive, he blows his chances.  A wilful attack on a Good Samaritan type results in a prison sentence, which unexpectedly also opens up the potential for a new life and a redemption of sorts, a job, life in a hostel, possibly a relationship.  An attempt, through social services, to orchestrate a meeting with the subject of his assault has a negative effect and rather than allowing him to draw a line and move on, it has the opposite effect.  All the while, we focus on Mike with his nervous body energy, the twitchiness, erratic eye movements, flashes of anger coupled with likability.  For performance skill alone, it is all very worthwhile.