I don’t know if the trail has gone completely cold on this thread but it didn’t get a cinema release up our way and I’ve just seen it on DVD. Really interesting stuff in the thread on genre and style but I’ll limit myself to casting which I thought was terrific. I had worries about Kristyn Scott-Thomas playing Aunt Mimi (no, not about her French accent this time!) It was indeed an interesting casting choice. I hadn’t thought of her as a provincial petite-bourgeoise but she catches it to perfection. (I should have recalled the remarks Lawrence Olivier is supposed to have said to Dustin Hoffman: “Try acting, dear boy”). And she and Anne Marie Duff worked extremely well together, especially in bringing out the class differences that had developed between the sisters. Like everyone else here I feel frustrated that UK films like these can’t seem to attract decent audiences. Anything we can learn from across La Manche?

Yes, that could be one reason for the film’s slightly disappointing performance. Given the central character, the acting talent and the buzz around the director, the current box-office (£1.25 million after 7 weeks) is not that much better than Control‘s £1.13 million over the same period. I wish it was easy to get the audience profile figures for both films – my guess is that Nowhere Boy has attracted more of the general specialised cinema audience, whereas Control appealed more to a specific fanbase (and therefore younger). But I may be way off.

I don’t know much about Sam Taylor-Wood, but I’m a bit surprised that an artist working on video pieces wasn’t more experimental in approaching the story of a young man with artistic pretensions himself. She includes a thanks to the late Anthony Minghella in the credits and she did work with him at one time. Minghella seems to have been a nice guy who was highly respected by colleagues – but I’ve never really gone for his films. I wonder how Nowhere Boy would have turned out if a North European artist turned filmmaker had directed it? Even better, imagine what Fassbinder might have made of the melodrama! btw the production notes reveal that the costume designer, Julian Day, also worked on Control. He makes some interesting points about the need for colourful designs and makes me think that possibly it’s not black and white that the film needs but some other stylistic feature, something noirish. There are moments in the film which just seem banal – the crane shot at the Summer Fete looks like a margarine commercial, but perhaps that’s just because I’ve seen the b+w images of the Quarrymen so many times. I’m sure that there is plenty more to say about this film.