It’s hard these days to create an original film from scratch, tougher still to launch a first film in the Cannes Selection. Three actors have achieved that feat this year, all playing in Un Certain Regard, where the spotlight tends to be less harsh: Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great,” starring American veteran June Squibb; Kristen Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water,” starring British actress Imogen Poots; and from the U.K., Harris Dickinson‘s “Urchin,” which will propel Frank Dillane (son of British actor Stephen Dillane) into Best Actor Oscar contention if a distributor does right by it. All the key North American distributors attended the debut on Saturday after good word leaked out of early New York screenings. Yes, it played well.
“The applause was lovely,” said Dickinson, sitting with Dillane on the roof of the J.W. Marriott Hotel with stunning views of the Gulf of Napoule. “We soaked it all in. We had all of our crew. We felt the love in the room. That’s a good feeling, to have given so much to somebody.”
Dickinson, who has yet to crack 30, has been a rising star ever since he broke out in Eliza Hittman’s New York indie “Beach Rats” in 2017, followed by Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness,” which won the Palme d’Or en route to a Best Picture nomination. The actor has written and directed countless shorts, which gave financiers confidence to back his riveting portrait of a struggling London addict (Dillane) who is by turns charming, manipulative, desperate, angry, violent, loving, joyful, childlike, and needy.
It still took six years for “Urchin” to get to Cannes. Dickinson started writing the script after working in Walthamstow on an outreach project “that was focusing on furniture reissue with people that were unhoused,” he said. “It was a way for them to make money. And it was also a commune where they could have a safe haven. There were welfare checks, and people close to me struggled with cyclical behavior. I’ve always tried to be compassionate around that and tried to understand why and how people have ended up in certain positions.”
Dickinson auditioned many actors but offered the role to Dillane early on. “I’d seen him in ‘Fear of the Walking Dead’ years before,” said Dickinson. “I was intrigued about him as a performer. But then we didn’t cross paths, or we never met each other. The script for me was one thing. I knew that it needed an actor to come in and elevate it and change it and turn it upside down as well. Because there’s only so much a script takes you, right? And that’s what he did. He was doing tai chi and breathing exercises whilst he was doing the scene: ‘This is very strange, and it’s perfect for the character.’”
It took a couple of years to get made once Dillane was on board. “Frank attached before we had full finance, which is rare for an actor to do,” said Dickinson. “We were lucky that Frank believed in the project enough to just say, ‘Yeah, I’m game.’ And we already were prepping, even though we didn’t know we were going to make it.”
As soon as he read the script, Dillane was eager to jump on board. “I remember I called you because I got the part,” Dillane said to Dickinson, “because I just wanted to say ‘yes’ straight away. I didn’t want there to be any lag, to go through the agents. You were in Berlin, so I was recording ‘Yes, I’ll do it.’ The script lent itself to almost anything. It was a real opportunity to carve out our own narrative, because it was ambiguous as to what the arc was, and it seemed like the arcs completed in each scene. It was almost like Mike had no throughline, and I found that exciting as an actor, to do each scene separate from the next one. He almost lived and breathed now. He was born again, and then he dies again, and then he goes there, and he’s born again. And I loved that about Harris’s script, because it was completely unconventional.”
In one heartbreaking scene, after seven months sober, Mike takes some ketamine with his girlfriend and her parents and is dancing and having a joyous time. He feels like he’s part of the family, everybody’s happy and good, and then he takes too much, and he can’t contain it. He doesn’t know where to stop.
Dillane had played an addict during “Fear the Walking Dead.” “When a character is on drugs at different times,” said Dillane, “I always tend to research the spiritual element of the drug. From researching ‘Fear the Walking Dead,’ the idea about heroin that got me was the idea that your cells are living and dying constantly, so you’re constantly dying and being reborn. That stuck with me a bit with this, the idea of physically continuing to be born and dying.”
The movie works because Dillane makes you care about this deeply flawed yet innocent character. “People that have gone to the brink of behavior,” said Dickinson, “the brink of morality, or brink of themselves, often are also joyous and naïve, because it helps them forget. It’s like an optimism that is in the moment for today.”
“He is innocent,” said Dillane. “That was the core of it. In order for us to be with him and to empathize with him, we have to just forgive him. And the reason we forgive him is he’s a child, he’s innocent, he’s an orphan. He’s not a bad person, just an open window. Harris kept distilling this thing of hope within me. We talked a lot about dignity in Harris. And that allowed the authenticity. So when he’s making a friend, this friend that he’s making is so important to him. When he relapses, it’s like family, ‘Finally, my people, oh, this is OK. Now, this is what we do. Everyone’s just cool.’ Some of us, we can’t do that. Unfortunately, Mike is one of those. It’s like an open window. Once you open it, you can’t close it again.”
Of course, Mike Leigh and “Naked” came to mind while prepping the film, but also “Career Girls” and “High Hopes,” said Dickinson, “there’s no misses with Mike Leigh. I love his use of humor. He’s so good at humanizing the mundane as well. It’s important, because there’s comedy in the simplicity of things sometimes, he does that so well.”
Another reason why Dillane wanted to work with Dickinson was that he admired his short films. “This was a big reason I did it,” said Dillane. Dickinson had been shooting shorts, including a series of skateboard videos, since he was 10 or 11. “I made loads of short films,” he said. “And then I made a more professional short film with BBC that led to the theatrical film. It was quite a rudimentary short, but it was a way for us to try and prove a little bit.”
As production loomed, Dickinson lost one of his actors in a key role playing a friend of Mike’s and reluctantly took on the role himself. “We auditioned people,” said Dickinson. “We got some tapes in, but I got a bit protective over that role because this is a member of the community. This is someone who is struggling, a vulnerable individual. Frank had months and months of research and time spent with advisors to understand this world and these issues. I couldn’t just expect an actor to pop in a week before and get that kind of person, whereas I’d been doing that work.”
It may have been the right decision, but it wasn’t easy, said Dickinson. “It was hard to direct myself and also be in a scene with someone you’re directing, because I started to lose track of the background and what things were happening. And you get even more neurotic; acting is neurotic.”
The film deploys long lens cinematography to capture Dillane on crowded streets. “We always knew we wanted to enter into Mike’s world in a pragmatic and simplistic way, unromantic and not trying to do trickery around life on the streets,” said Dickinson. “We wanted to be observational and simplistic, and that was also to avoid any romanticism around it, but also just to ground it in that community. That was always important to us, and the story that we enter into as well. We believe it and we understand it, and we get a real sense of it. And then we allow ourselves to introduce surrealism, a slightly different language. We earned that.”
Next up: Dillane is going home to London to do some auditions. (His stock is going to rise considerably after “Urchin.”) And Dickinson is following up “Babygirl” and “Blitz” as John Lennon in Sam Mendes’ series of four Beatles films. Dickinson swears he’ll have time to do other things as well. “I wrote this script whilst I was working,” he said, “I didn’t take time out to write the script. I was always writing. I write when I’m on a plane. I’ll be able to write and direct still. I’ll have to finish the films first.”
