The Selfish Giant

Arbor (Chapman) and Swifty (Thomas) are 14-year-old friends living on a grim housing estate in Bradford. Excluded from school for fighting with other kids, the two mates take to collecting scrap for local traveller Kitten (Gilder), who then employs Swifty to look after and ride his horse in the trap races. With Shifty not around, the lonely Arbor takes to swiping things he shouldn’t, which will have terrible consequences on the friendship.

This adaptation of Oscar Wilde's short story is almost a complete re-imagining by way of Ken Loach. The sly Kitten plays the eponymous monster but there's no real redemption for him and Kitten's scrapyard fails to blossom when the boys turn up with a cart of scrap (the story's religious overtones are also missing). All the adult male characters are just as bad with Steve Evetts, playing Swifty's nogoodnik father, selling the furniture his children are eating their cold dinner on. While the women aren't the liars, cheats and scoundrels that the men are, they are too soft and incapable of controlling their tearaway children.

In the absence of parental responsibility, Arbor and Swifty do what they can to fill the void: with his father AWOL, it's Arbor's shoulder his mother (Rebecca Manley) cries on when his brother (Elliot Tittensor) gets in trouble with drug dealers; it's Swifty that slips mum (Downton's Siobhan Finneran) cash when the repo men turn up at the door. It’s Swifty too that Arbor's mother asks if he has taken his medication or not. These boys are on their own. An opening scene sees cables severed by a passing train - the cutting of the umbilical cord/ties that bind perhaps.

Arbor and Swifty's friendship is one that warms the cockles. Complimenting each other perfectly, the scrappy Arbor is all mouth and movement, a cheeky chappie missing the charm, while towering above his mate, Swifty is the reserved, delicate one. Unknowns Chapman and Thomas are just wonderful in the lead roles.

In only her second film, Clio Barnard has declared herself a major filmmaker of the future. This is a real heartbreaker.