Reviewed: Nowhere Boy (15)

Dec 31 2009 Flintshire Chronicle

A BIOPIC of the early days of bespectacled Beatle John Lennon by celebrated conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood in this valentine to Lennon’s formative years, based on the memoirs of his half-sister Julia Baird.

Matt Greenhalgh, who penned the script to the award-winning Ian Curtis biopic Control, delivers a similarly polished screenplay here that plunges the characters headfirst into a maelstrom of destructive emotions.

The film opens in 1955 Liverpool with a 15-year-old John (Aaron Johnson) at odds with his emotionally-repressed Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas).

Thankfully, Uncle George (David Threlfall) is a soft touch and indulges the boy’s whims, buying him his first harmonica.

When George dies from a sudden heart attack, John takes the advice of his cousin Stan (James Johnson) and seeks out his biological mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff).

Nervous at first, the teenager is quickly dazzled by the impulsive free spirit and her carefree ways.

However, the giggles and bright red lipstick conceal a tendency to fall into deep depression, and young John finds himself torn between the two women.

“She’s going to hurt you, you know that,” warns Mimi, but her words fall on deaf ears.

Nowhere Boy is handsomely-crafted. Shot on location in Merseyside, it subtly reveals the personal anguish that led to Lennon meeting the young Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster) and George Harrison (Sam Bell), and forming his first band.

Fittingly, Nowhere Boy ends on a sombre and melancholic note, and a touching promise to Mimi that John honoured for the rest of his life.

STAR RATING: ****