Premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, it was released in the United Kingdom in the fall of 2020. It was made available online in the United States in the winter of 2021 just before the 74th BAFTA ceremony where this film was nominated for 7 awards, including Outstanding British Film of the Year. It was also up for 15 British Independent Film Awards where it won 5 trophies, including Best British Independent Film. It fits wonderfully in the genre of coming-of-age films, centering on minorities, particularly people of color and particularly young women. It's about class division and the struggle in poverty. Its characters live in what are called council estates, which are public housing for low-income people in the UK. Not being from the UK, the first time I'd seen those council estates was in the film
Beautiful Thing (1996). I saw them again in
Fish Tank (2010) and then again in
My Brother the Devil (2013). Yet, those films were less about the poverty and the desperation, but more about identity and sexuality.
This film opens with a depiction of a diverse group of teenage female friends, mostly Black girls as friends. It's rare to see a film about the friendships between Black girls. Some films that came to mind recently in that regard include Girlhood (2015), Premature (2020) and Cuties (2020). Those films too were more about sexuality, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just seems like a trend. This film isn't a part of that trend. It's more about survival and children being beset with the burden of taking care of themselves or being alone without parental supervision. It goes beyond the idea of latchkey kids but perhaps not as far as the idea of orphans.
Bukky Bakray stars as Olushola Omotoso aka "Rocks," a teenage, Black girl living in London with her single mother and her little brother. One day when her mother disappears or basically abandons her, Rocks realizes that she has to do what she can to look after her brother. She has an interest in doing makeup, so she tries to get work doing makeup for whoever she can and whatever occasion, be it a wedding or something else. She's mostly a regular girl who likes to hang out with her friends, possibly being interested in boys and having fun by doing dance routines. In a brief scene, we see that she's only just recently started having her menstruation period. Without her mother, she relies on her friends to help her through it. The only other family she has is her grandmother who is currently living in Lagos, Nigeria.
The premise is reminiscent of Home Alone (1990) but instead of a white privileged boy all on his own, it's a Black girl who's slightly older and responsible for her younger sibling. If anything, it's closer to The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete (2013), but that film was about a mother who was forcibly removed. Here, the mother chooses to abandon her children of her own volition. It's also about a boy looking after another. Here, it's about a girl being pushed to grow up and fill a mother role before she's ready to do so. It reminded me more of the recent Goldie (2020), which has pretty much the exact same premise but it's set in New York. It's also equally emotional and just as devastating.
D'angelou Osei Kissiedu plays Emmanuel Omotoso, the little brother to Rocks. He's probably around 5 or 6 years-old. He misses his mother and gets pulled around from place to place, as Rocks struggles to find shelter for them as they essentially become homeless. He loves his sister and is a little boy who mostly just wants to play and be with his family. His relationship with his sister is the sentimental core of this film, which does get milked for what it's worth. This relationship is actually developed more than the comparable relationships in
Goldie.
Director Sarah Gavron reportedly cast non-actors to play in a lot of these roles, or young people who had never been on screen before. It sounds similar to the way that Sean Baker makes his American films and comparisons could be made to Baker's The Florida Project (2017). That film leans more on the perspective of the little child. This one is more balanced or at least gives us more than just the little boy's point-of-view. That's important because at the end of the day, this film is about letting children be children, even when it comes to Rocks, even though she believes she can be an adult and take care of things. She has to learn that sometimes you have to leave things up to adults, and let yourself be a child, having fun with your friends and not worrying about paying bills. This film is excellent in that regard.
Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 33 mins.
Available on Netflix.
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