The Thousands

Sam Taylor-Wood’s photographic and video work tackles sex, vulnerability and pseudo-religious catharsis – you may know her portrait of David Beckham sleeping – so it’s fitting that her first feature film follows one of music’s biggest icons, John Lennon. Nowhere Boy depicts John (Aaron Johnson) as a lost, angry teenager ricocheting between his stern guardian, Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott-Thomas), his feckless mum Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) who’d given him up when he was small, and his newfound love: rock’n'roll.

The production design is lushly symbolic – womb-like ruby-reds at Julia’s house, cool, crisp blues at Mimi’s, verdant Liverpool parks and velvety dark theatres. Music forges emotional connections: the grave, pencil-necked Paul (Thomas Sangster) jousts and bonds with John over guitar riffs, and in an uncomfortably erotic scene, mother and son listen to ‘I Put A Spell On You’.

While John isn’t often a sympathetic figure – he’s often a cruel dickhead – the camera constantly caresses Johnson’s pretty face (he’s much more conventionally good-looking than the real Lennon). If anything, Nowhere Boy is a little too reverential. Taylor-Wood wants to capture a budding genius beginning to flower, and all the shit around him is just treated as fertiliser.