Stella does tricks

Having escaped Glasgow and the sexual abuse of the father she once adored, Stella winds up on the streets of London as a teenage prostitute with a vicious middle-aged pimp. Despite her bleak and seemingly hopeless circumstances, a streak of anger and yearning drives her to escape the sadistic men who dominate her life, but not before her pimp exacts one last act of savage abuse. The film shifts abruptly between Stella’s romanticised interior world of memories and fantasies, and the real world where her rage erupts into acts of vandalism and often poetic revenge on the men who have mistreated her. Giedroyc draws on her former experience as a director of realist drama and documentary for British television, handling the often confronting subject matter frankly and suffusing the film with a sense of outrage and urgency. Cast includes Kelly Macdonald, James Bolam, Hans Matheson and Ewan Stewart.