Nowhere Boy held the honoured position of closing the Canberra International Film Festival in November 2009. It was only the second screening of the movie – so a real coup for Canberra.

The movie captures the moment when a teenage John Lennon declares that he is going to form a rock ’n’ roll band and how he discovers local lads Paul McCartney and George Harrison in his own backyard of Liverpool, England.

More importantly, the movie is about the tug-of-love triangle between a teenage Lennon (Johnson), his guardian and aunt (Scott Thomas) and his biological mum (Duff) who abandoned him as a five-year-old child. As fate would have it, ten years later Lennon re-discovered his mum living but a few blocks away. It is his mum who brings the energy, vibrancy and freedom of rock’n’roll into his life – and the rest is a wonderful chapter in the pages of rock music history.

For those interested in the music of The Beatles, there are pleasing mementos of songs scattered within the movie. For those not so interested in The Beatles per se, as a cinematic experience Aaron Johnson does an excellent job portraying the complexity of John Lennon’s character. And his buff body is pleasing to the eye, although contrary to my own pre-conceived image of John as a scrawny kid. I suppose it can’t hurt to… imagine?

Because of his reputation – as a left-wing director making socially conscious films about the urban poor – I’m always a little apprehensive walking into anything by Ken Loach. But each time the film itself has been a pleasant surprise – especially so in this case.

We open looking at a worn-out man in a complete state of mental breakdown, driving round and round a traffic island until he crashes. The man is Eric (Evets), at the lowest point in his life. His ex-wife rightly holds him in contempt; his daughter is continually let down by him; his two sons, with two different mothers (both long gone), seem to have nothing in common with him but his house and are drifting into a life of petty crime; and he just can’t cope. He has nowhere to go but up – but he has to work on that, because there’s no guarantee he’ll go anywhere.

His way out of the hole he’s dug himself into is an odd one: he has recurring hallucinations of his hero, Manchester United football legend Eric Cantona, (played with irresistible charm by himself) who appears out of nowhere to give hope, advice and the occasional kick in the pants.

What starts as a depressing case study of an apparent loser turns out to be the story of someone completely turning his life around – a film so optimistic it soars. By the end we’re surprised to find that Eric not-Cantona is someone whose company we actually enjoy.