Triangle of Sadness and Babygirl breakout star Harris Dickinson steps behind the camera for a bruising, brilliantly strange debut that channels veteran auteurs like Jonathan Glazer and Andrea Arnold, while carving out a distinctive voice all its own.
In a year of A-list actors turning director – first-timers Kristen Stewart and Scarlett Johansson have films at Cannes too – the Londoner delivers a stylish, uncompromising debut that captures a hidden side of his hometown. Written by Dickinson himself, Urchin draws on his experiences growing up around people dealing with addiction and mental illness. It lulls you into a sense of comfort before punching you hard in the ribs.
Urchin flirts – briefly – with the social realism of Andrea Arnold. Mike (In the Heart of the Sea’s Frank Dillane), homeless and fraying at the edges, has had his wallet stolen. He knows who did it – his so-called friend and fellow vagrant Nathan (Dickinson in a small but key cameo). They scrap. A city worker steps in to break it up and, in a small gesture of kindness, offers Mike lunch. Then, without warning, Mike lashes out, striking the man and stealing his watch. Dillane has an uncanny ability to make us sympathise with Mike – even when he’s acting heinously. His attack is senseless, shocking: a jolt that reorients everything and ends with him back in prison.
It lulls you into a sense of comfort before punching you hard in the ribs
But it’s in the second act that Dickinson’s voice sharpens into something confident, expressionistic and unafraid to blur the line between realism and dream logic. This is epitomised by a visually arresting, screen-saver-like time-lapse sequence that marks both the passing of time and Mike’s reawakening. It’s straight out of Glazer’s Under the Skin playbook.
When Mike is released, seven months sober, he’s trying to stay clean. Routine returns: probation meetings, self-help tapes with a meditative quality, a job as a chef. With a cooking pot of comedy and drama, Dickinson resists the urge to romanticise recovery; every small victory feels precarious, every act of normalcy strained. The cloud looming over Mike isn’t just whether he can stay on track – it’s what will be left of him if he cracks.
Dickinson introduces glimmers of light, including an ethereal romance that hints at salvation. But he’s a storyteller too well-versed in destructive spirals to offer easy redemption. Mike is stalked by his own self-sabotaging instincts, ensuring that Urchin transcends its Dickensian influences to chart a messy, complex London where true redemption remains elusive.
Already an actor of note, the princely Urchin crowns Dickinson as a serious new filmmaking voice too.
Urchin premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.