Nowhere Special has a ten-tissue set-up. Similar in tone and theme to his Still Life, another film that deals thoughtfully with death, Uberto Pasolini’s inspired-by-true-life drama is built on such a saccharine premise — a dying father trying to find new parents for his child — that it makes a Hallmark Christmas movie look like Scorsese at his darkest. But Pasolini’s film is much more controlled and moving than the TV film-of-the-week logline suggests. Intelligently scripted (save one misstep), beautifully played and perfectly judged tonally, it’s small scale but packs a huge punch.
Essentially, Nowhere Special is a two-hander between window cleaner John (James Norton) and his four-year-old son Michael (Daniel Lamont). The film perfectly sketches their easy rapport in small vignettes, be it picking Michael up at school or playing in the park (in a keenly observed touch, Michael’s clothing constantly changes, while John is stuck in the same tracksuit, a subtle reminder of this single dad’s priorities). Slowly the crux of the matter emerges: John is taking Michael to meet prospective adoptive parents because he is dying of an unspecified illness. These meet-and-greet interviews are tiny theatre pieces in themselves, as John (and Michael, who always sits in, the conversation going over his head) participates in speed dates with potential new families to find the perfect match; an outdoorsy couple? A family with a rabbit? A huge brood? In every case, it is clear they can give Michael far more than John ever could.
Norton perfectly plays a man who perceives his only achievement in life as his son.
It’s perhaps the film’s biggest problem that there is zero tension in whom John will actually choose, the prospective candidate being far too obvious. But, in-between meetings of prospective parents, Pasolini avoids manipulation by simply assembling tiny moments between father and son — the pair putting 34 candles on John’s birthday cake is particularly poignant. Nowhere Special is a film that’s alive to the tricky feelings and quandaries the unusual situation sets up, from John’s refusal to read to Michael When Dinosaurs Die, a picture book suggested by counsellors, to the idea of creating a ‘memory box’, filled with mementoes that give a child a sense of the parent who is now gone. John is reticent — he just wants his son, who will only have the sketchiest memories aged four, to start over.
It’s also a rare film that gives an uneducated, poor, white, tattooed man not only a voice, but also a sensitive one at that. It makes the choice of Norton a brave one — he is miles away from being the next 007 here — but it is a master stroke: he perfectly plays a man who perceives his only achievement in life as his son and will go to any lengths to preserve the child’s safety/happiness. Save a run-in with a window-cleaning client (cue egg-throwing), it’s a quietly modulated performance and all the better for it. He is matched by Lamont, who is super cute (but never cloying) and authentic as a kid unaware that his life is about to fundamentally change in every way.