THE KID (15, 111 mins), *** Starring Rupert Friend, Augustus Prew, William Finn Miller, Natascha McElhone, Con O’Neill, Ioan Gruffudd, Jodie Whittaker, Bernard Hill, Shirley Anne Field, Alfie Allen, James Fox
Based on the harrowing memoir by Kevin Lewis, The Kid is a shocking portrait of child abuse and neglect set in 1980s and 1990s south-east London.
Actor-turned-director Nick Moran continues to flourish behind the camera, pulling few punches with his depiction of the brutality suffered by Kevin in the council estate house that became his prison.
Locked in his room, the battered and bruised youngster sought refuge in his imagination, honing the storytelling skills that would sow the seeds of a best-selling literary career many years later.
Moran’s film opens on a bleak note with the lead character’s attempted suicide – “It was March ’93, a Wednesday I think, when I decided to kill myself” – then rewinds to 1980 to chronicle the catalogue of errors that condemns a helpless boy to the tirades of his parents.
Kevin (Miller) is a punchbag for his volatile mother Gloria (McElhone) and father Dennis (O’Neill) until social services finally intervene, placing the boy in a home run by Uncle David (Hill).
No sooner has Kevin settled in and begun to flourish, than social services intervenes again, this time to return him to his parents.
The cycle of violence continues and as Kevin enters his difficult teenage years (now played by Prew), he arouses the interest of concerned teacher Colin Smith (Gruffudd).
“His dad’s an alcoholic and his mum’s Frankenstein in drag, apparently,” a fellow teacher tells Colin, who inspires Kevin to stand on his own two feet and to seek a new life, enveloped by the love of foster parents Alan (Fox) and Margaret (Field).
Once again, fate conspires against Kevin (now played by Friend) and he plunges into the abyss – the only glimmer of hope, a fledgling romance with a beautiful girl called Jackie (Whittaker).
The Kid is an accomplished adaptation of Lewis’s autobiographical novel.
McElhone is almost unrecognisable behind spectacles, bedraggled hair and a mouth full of filthy, crooked teeth.
Miller and Prew endure most of the beatings, while Friend plays Kevin as a cripplingly shy, wounded soul, who doesn’t seem at all surprised when misfortune comes his way.
The tone is grim with occasional flecks of humour, as when Kevin swabs the floors of a disused warehouse because “some Swedish nutters want to turn this place into a furniture store.” Ho ho.
A coda of footage of the real-life Kevin and his wife leaves a lump in the throat as we contemplate the extraordinary, enduring power of the human spirit.
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