Cast: Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ann-Marie Duff, Thomas Brodie Sangster

Director: Sam Taylor-Wood

Written By: Matt Greenhalgh

Liverpool, 1955. A frustrated 16 year-old boy is struggling to find himself. The boy is John Lennon, and Nowhere Boy is the largely untold story of his pre-Beatles life.

Before the crowds of screaming girls, there were just two dominant women in John Lennon’s life – his Aunt Mimi and his mother. Abandoned by the latter (Ann-Marie Duff) as a five year old, Lennon grew up with his Aunt and Uncle, however when his Uncle George dies suddenly of a heart attack in the early scenes of the film, John’s life is cast into disarray.  Aunt Mimi (an excellent Kristin Scott Thomas) maintains a stiff-upper lip following the death, informing John “we just have to get on with it; it’s just the two of us now.â€? An emotionally confused Lennon searching for a missing ingredient in his life goes and visits the mother who abandoned him and is seduced by her energy and love of the rock n’ roll music that has just arrived in town. With his mother now back in his life John has two very different, and opposing, parenting figures.

While his Aunt Mimi tries to keep a tight rein on him, reprimanding him for receiving a bad school report, his mother seems only to encourage him, letting him stay at her house while he is suspended from school and teaching him to play the banjo. Perhaps without her musical encouragement we may not have had the John Lennon that was to become a legend. Watching them bond comprises several heart-warming scenes of the pair gallivanting around Blackpool and singing together at her house.

John goes increasingly off the rails from Mimi’s regime but his musical life is just beginning to take form. He assigns his friends roles in his new band and ‘The Quarrymen’ are born – the early makings of what would become The Beatles. Soon after John is introduced to a young Paul McCartney (Thomas Brodie Sangster) and here we find some quite amusing and touching scenes of their early friendship. John’s unashamed rebellion and Paul’s sweet nature are a complete contrast and the appeal of the band for them is very different: John craves excitement, fame and girls, whereas Paul just wants to play music.

Despite John’s early happiness in being reunited with his mother, confused resentment soon begins to take precedence. He loses his temper with her at the birthday party she throws for him and everything comes crashing down in a confrontation between John and the two women in his life. The peace that follows is interrupted by a shock event that only die-hard Lennon fans could know to be coming.

Overall the film is both a volatile and touching portrayal of the young Lennon and gives rare insight into the boy before the superstar with a real flavour of Fifties rock n’ roll and the excitement it brought.  His relationship with his aunt, whose strictness we recognise, as finally the young John does too, was out of love, is shown as the true force it had upon John’s life as we learn, after leaving Liverpool and his career started, he rang her every week for the rest of her life.

Particularly passionate performances are given by the two women; Kristen Scott Thomas and Ann-Marie Duff and Aaron Johnson, a relative newcomer, plays John in a role which is bound to cement his status as a rising star to watch.

Nowhere Boy is out now via Icon Films