Who Do You Love? (2005) Online

A young girl lives with her mother in a Scottish flat. She is a nice young thing but her mother is poor and gets basics by borrowing money and stealing where she has to – their relationship is far from being "loving". Whenever the girl fails to steal them some food, the mother is forced to take more drastic steps that highlight the self-serving nature of her love for her daughter.

Early on in this short we are shown the characters in one scene where, seconds after waking up, the girl is shy and hurting while the mother is rude and loud. However even with this I was shocked by it later on and was engaged by it consistently. The story is the little girl and we are easily made to feel for her with the story really going that far to extremes (well, not within its own universe). The hurt and longing for love is brought out really well by Keenan and it is her performance that mostly drives the narrative where a lesser performance would not have been able to bring out so much without words. Dickie is just as good and convinces as one of those type of people who love their children conditionally but rarely show it when you look at their actions – supermarkets on a Saturday afternoon are full of them if you want to see what I mean, people who are quick to hit and shout.

The direction is roundly strong and it certainly doesn't look or feel like a film that was constrained by budget, while the performances McRoberts draws out are strong enough to add detail to any sweeping strokes he makes with his characters in his script. Simple, quite touching and worth seeing.