The Selfish Giant

Two Yorkshire school friends tangle with an unscrupulous local scrap dealer in order to help their cash-strapped families in this cautionary contemporary fable. Nominally based on the Oscar Wilde story, it's a tale of childhood innocence in straitened circumstances that perhaps self-consciously harks back to Ken Loach's Kes. Still, despite wonderful contributions from newcomers Conner Chapman and Shaun Thomas as the young lads who graduate from horse-and-trap racing to the theft of valuable copper wire, this second feature from promising director Clio Barnard (The Arbor) isn't quite on the same level as its distinguished 1969 predecessor. For one thing, while it's evidently well intentioned, the story's outcome is also a tad predictable, and too often the portrait of crushing social inequity falls prey to broad "grim up north" cliché. That said, Barnard extracts magical performances from her non-professional leads, who capture the heightened emotional responses and surging optimism of childhood, which acts as a potent contrast to the sobering fate we suspect lies in store for them.