Broken is a 2012 British coming-of-age drama film starring Eloise Laurence and Tim Roth. It is based on the novel of the same name by Daniel Clay, inspired by To Kill A Mockingbird.
Skunk is 11, pretty cool and wise beyond her years. Her summer holidays have just begun, promising unhurried days and easy hopes. But their culdesac idyll soon has a dark shadow cast over it – and them – and Skunks innocence begins to be drained away at a speed, and in a way she cannot control. Her home, her neighbourhood, her school become treacherous environments where the happy certainties of childhood give way, and a complex, seemingly broken world may fill her future.
Awards
- Won British Independent Film Awards for: Best British Independent Film (2012) and Best Supporting Actor, Rory Kinnear (2012)
- Nominated British Independent Film Awards for: Best Actor Tim Roth, Best Director Rufus Norris, Best Screenplay Mark O'Rowe, Best Supporting Actor Cillian Murphy (2012)
- Nominated European Film Awards, European Discovery of the Year – Rufus Norris (2012)
- Won Zurich Film Festival Golden Eye Award, Best International Feature Film (2012)
- Won Stockholm Film Festival Award, Best Actor, Tim Roth
Broken Movie Review
"A story of crumbling innocence and the several failures of character that have dreadful, destructive consequences, Broken barely escapes the despair label as debuting filmmaker Rufus Norris explores the powerful tools of cinema. Images are used to convey moods, and his camera gives us the points of view that make the most dramatic impact.
The adaptation from the novel is excellent, a fine example of how character and place can be sculpted from prose. Eloise Laurence makes a compelling debut as the 11 year old Skunk, a pretty young girl whose freshness and smarts are challenged as a series of rash judgements by people around her – some in physical, some in emotional proximity. It's not just adults, either, and it's not the usual suspects.
Cillian Murphy is outstanding as the young teacher Mike, another casualty of emotional turmoil. And it's not his affair with Kasia (Zana Marjanovic, wonderful) Skunk's live-in nanny (after her mother went off with an accountant from Birmingham) that is the problem.
Tim Roth, in his first British film in two decades, makes a likeable and restrained character out of Skunk's loving lawyer father. Intruding into this relatively stable world are outsiders whose damaging actions churn up the sea of relative calm. The story paints their neighbouring family as the source of the misery, with a variety of actions, lies and acts of violence – not least against another neighbour, the mentally frail young Rick (Robert Emms, heartbreaking).
Skunk's relationship are all tested, some shattered, and her very life is in danger. It's all powerful material and Norris shows that theatre is just as good a training ground for serious, grown up drama as film school." Urban Cinefile