The movie revolves around Arbor, a 13-year-old boy, and Swifty is their best friend and they both have a strong relationship. Apparently they are meeting up with Kitten, a local scrap dealer, as Kitten prefers Swifty, which makes Arbor go through a bad experience along the way.
Ultimately, it's a sad, tough sit - but worth seeing for its gritty honesty and strong cast.
ABC Radio (Australia)
August 06, 2014
There is a plot (adapted from Oscar Wilde's famous short story of the same name), and it's a good one, but ... most important are Arbor and Swifty, played to pure perfection by little Connor Chapman and big Shaun Thomas.
Barnard bolsters this central friendship and subsequent unwitting rivalry with myriad background details to flesh out their world and expose how dire circumstances are.
Clio Barnard's The Selfish Giant isn't the Oscar Wilde children's story, but more an inspired take on it in the kitchen-sink style of a Ken Loach drama.
Barnard's film is charged with the same compassion and lyricism. It is one of those desperately sad and dispiriting films that one would prefer to forget but probably never will.
Much of the movie is hard to bear, yet it never drags, thanks to the momentum that Barnard finds in the fable, and, above all, to the energy that she unleashes in her young leads.
The Selfish Giant is one of the best films of the year: captivating, often funny, and filled with the most naturalistic performances you're likely to see.
Though they share the same title, director Clio Barnard's bewitching follow-up to The Arbor bears little cosmetic similarity to the fluorescent idyll of Oscar Wilde's 19th century children's fable.
Detroit News
February 19, 2014
"The Selfish Giant" is a story of dependence, damage and desperation, told with grit and grimy frankness. It's also a portrait of friendship born of need and emptiness, on the road to nowhere.
