Homelessness sits alongside us all. Structurally embedded into our social concrete, each gaze averted and conversation avoided working to invisibilise. Precious acts of kindness are fleeting; Urchin forces its viewers to sit and stay a while.
The film is Harris Dickinson’s (Babygirl, Triangle of Sadness, Beach Rats) feature-length debut as a director, and holds a mirror to the systems we all participate in. It is a tender yet raw depiction of life on the outskirts, exploring homelessness through antihero Mike (Frank Dillane). We watch as he fumbles through familiar institutions and buildings. A police station. A hotel. A karaoke bar. A corner shop.
Initially, we observe Mike from afar; just as the world does. Long lens shots and observational framing in the film’s first act, keep Mike at both a physical and emotional distance. But as the narrative unfolds, Dickinson presses audiences to look closer. The camerawork becomes increasingly intimate and human as we watch Mike navigate rehabilitation and tentatively reach for stability. Mike stays in a hostel room for a short while. Its yellow walls frame fragile moments. Here, we see him smoke, masturbate and shadow-box. A meditation tape insists “You are in the driving seat”, as he attempts to piece himself together. Or at least relax for a short while.
Urchin does not beg for sympathy and neither does it sentimentalise. Mike beats up and steals the watch of a man who offers to buy him food. He is rude to those who care for him. But we also watch him falter and break down in a restorative justice session, and coyly ask if the woman he sleeps with (Andrea, played by Megan Northam, who he befriends during a litter-picking job) wishes he had lasted longer.
At its core, Urchin is a film about cycles and patterns. Mike is given chances and glimpses of something more. In the karaoke scene, he sings ‘Whole Again’ by Atomic Kitten with co-workers beneath a mirror ball, and he seems truly giddy recounting the experience. One of the small finite bursts of joy we see interlaced between the grit. However, he begins to slip up at work and succumb to drugs again. In one of the final scenes, Mike breaks down in a corner shop after attempting to scrape together coins for alcohol, the weight of his unravelling visible in every gesture. His words are jumbled, but he cries to the shopkeeper about feeling that the world holds things within his reach.
Dickinson experiments with surrealist interludes that feel dreamlike, or at times drug-fuelled. They let us into a dark fairytale, blurring the lines of reality. They exemplify Mike’s fragile state of mind and remind us of the nightmarish quality. These scenes felt folklorish, reminiscent of Salvador Dali paintings or Yorgos Lanthimos’ work. Like being trapped inside a lucid dream.
Ultimately, Mike ends up in the same place we first met him. We aren’t fed a satisfying ending, just the acrid reminder that life is unfair.
Urchin doesn’t offer easy answers or redemptive arcs. It simply asks for a witness, to look directly at what is so often obscured in plain sight.
5/5
Image Credits – The Movie DB
