“Mother, you had me, but I never had you”. John Lennon’s plaintive song about childhood abandonment fittingly closes this biopic of the musician’s early years. Sensitively depicting Lennon’s struggle as he bounces between the mother who gave birth to him and the mother who raised him, Nowhere Boy intuitively captures teen anguish amplified by a feeling of not fitting in. Fortunately, Lennon is able to find some sense of belonging in a skiffle band he forms with a little help from his friends.

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Within a precious few minutes of screen time, David Threlfall endears himself as Uncle George before promptly dropping dead. Left alone with the dour Aunt Mimi, John renews his relationship with her sister Julia, who happens to be his birth mother. The polar opposite to Mimi, Julia is bursting with energy, impulsively spending a day at Blackpool with John where her flirty behaviour verges on being inappropriate. As kids often do, John starts to play one parent off the other till matters come to a head on his birthday.

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There are no villains in this piece, just a family trying to make the best of the situation they find themselves in. Though Mimi may appear cold and unloving it is clear she has Lennon’s best interests at heart, whereas Julia’s vivaciousness comes with its own set of drawbacks. Though some visual references and verbal byplay may point to future Beatles’ songs, it is the sincere dramatization of this rather slight tale that provides signposts to one of rock and roll’s most interesting figures.

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The timeline of Nowhere Boy precludes its soundtrack from featuring any of the Beatles’ hits. There is however, a rendition of John Lennon’s ‘Hello Little Girl’ and a faithful recreation of The Quarrymen recording Paul McCartney’s ‘In Spite of All the Danger’.