Somers Town (Shane Meadows, 2008)

Meadows's featurette is the first one he didn't have a hand in writing, the first set outside his Midlands home turf, and furthermore, disconcertingly for a director synonymous with independent and community-centred British film, financed wholly by Eurostar.
There was no need to worry about any of this. His backers have wisely given him free rein to make the kind of low-key drama he's always made, with little apparent requirement to big up their product or tart up the grimy area around their rail terminal, the combination of Paul Fraser's script and improv by the two teenage leads works a treat and Meadows proves to be as at ease at finding little nuggets of pathos from London estates as from Nottingham ones. The two boys who become friends, Thomas Turgoose (from Meadows's This Is England) as a cheeky urchin who's run away to London, and Piotr Jagiello as the shy Polish boy who gives him a place to stay, put in unaffected performances and some lovely moments of unforced humour crop up through their harmless shenanigans.
All the same, it is a very slight creation, and not only because of its 71-minute running time, ending with a vague fizzle before anything of consequence has actually transpired. If Meadows had realised from the off that he had all the parts required for an urban drama of substance at his disposal instead of just setting out to slap together an organic short, who knows how good it could have been?

6/10