18, 90 mins

The week’s other British release couldn’t be further from the cosy world of Aardman. The opening sequence of London to Brighton tells you that the debut feature by the British writer/director Paul Andrew Williams is something pretty special. Two girls seek refuge in a public lavatory, both in a state of near hysteria. The younger is weeping with the uncontrollable hiccups of a crying child. The older, her face raw from the kind of beating that doesn’t stop to ask questions, tries to comfort her even as her own panic mounts. We have no idea what this battered hooker, Kelly, and Joanne, her 11-year-old charge, are hiding from; we have no clue about what they might have done. What we do know for certain is that they fear for their lives. It’s a brilliant, brutal scene that sets the tone for a film that doesn’t let up its breathless pace or tension for a moment.

Kelly is played by the superb Lorraine Stanley, a formidable newcomer who, on the strength of this performance, should soon be on our screens non-stop. Stanley sidesteps the obvious tart-with-a-heart clichés with a more complex reading of her character’s plight. Kelly’s motivation for going on the run with Joanne is admittedly mostly fear, but there’s an undercurrent of guilt at her own complicity that surfaces whenever she can pause for breath.

The narrative is non-linear. After our hasty introduction to the girls on the run, the story winds back to the beginning, to the squalid little world in which Derek (Johnny Harris, also excellent) is king of all he surveys. Derek has cold, hard eyes and a way of convincing people to do his bidding which is one part charm to nine parts physical threat.

Derek knows all the grubby secrets in London’s underworld, which is why he is called upon by a local gangland boss, Duncan Allen (Alexander Morton), to provide him with an evening’s entertainment. But since Duncan has specialist tastes, Derek browbeats Kelly into scouring the stations and underpasses for a suitably young runaway.

Kelly convinces herself that Joanne is streetwise beyond her tender years, but she’s reminded time and again that the slight figure earnestly puffing on a cigarette is just a child.

At the top of the food chain is Duncan’s son Stuart (Sam Spruell), dangerously softly-spoken and cold-eyed, whose lip curls with disgust at the scum he has to deal with. The climax of this lean, taut thriller is as direct and devastating as the rest of the film. It’s a blistering debut.

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