IF Bart Simpson were British, and black and white instead of yellow, he’d be a lot like Tomo (Thomas Turgoose), the indestructible young street scamp who saunters through “Somers Town,” a north London neighborhood that tries but fails to keep him down.
The film is directed in newsprint-quality black and white by kitchen-sink realist Shane Meadows, who discovered Turgoose three years ago for “This Is England,” his perceptive film about 1980s London skinheads. But dingy as it is, the teen Tomo lights it up.
He’s a springy, wised-up little runt, living rough and looking for an angle, when he meets a soft-spoken and weak-willed Polish boy (Piotr Jagiello) whose dad is an immigrant construction worker. With the one’s smarts and the other’s work ethic, the two of them are soon pulling off such elaborate scams as . . . stealing a worthless bag of laundry.
Their friendship of convenience, set in a Mike Leigh world of totally naturalistic actors and backdrops in which cement is the primary design feature, becomes a surprisingly strong thing that both of them become willing to fight for — even as they both fall for a French waitress who can’t help smiling at their puppyish efforts.
Like its star, the movie is too short and a little thin but just about perfect, starting from the absolute nothing the two kids have in common (the English kid gets beaten up by thugs while the Pole is the lonely child of an alcoholic) to reach a wordless place of beauty. In reality or possibly in a dream, the two penniless boys find themselves proudly stepping out with their Parisian waitress, kings of all they survey.
SOMERS TOWN
All right, mate.
Running time: 70 minutes. Not rated (profanity, sexual situations, teen drinking). At Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street.