The terminal-illness weepie needs a firm hand or it can run off all over the place. Nowhere Special is a great case in point. Writer and director Uberto Pasolini keeps a tight grip, and James Norton’s impassioned but restrained performance is a thing of wonder. It’s so good that – as happens with proper acting – barely anyone noticed him when it came to awards time. Check it out, though.
This is an undeniably simple film, but like a fine meal made from a few good ingredients, it just all comes together. Norton plays John, a window cleaner with some non-specific cancer. The entirety of Nowhere Special consists of John trying to find new parents for his little boy Michael (Daniel Lamont), to replace him when he’s gone.
With only brief let-ups it’s one interview of new potential parents after another. Prospective Family A, followed by Family B, and so on, with cutaways to John cleaning the odd window, a bit of father-dad interaction between John and his boy and chats with the social worker who’s pressing John to make a decision. Plus scant medical moments – John getting chemo – but very little of John in pain or exhibiting obvious physical decline. Kitchen sink is flirted with but not entirely embraced.
We meet Celia and Philip. They have money, staff and a massive house. If they notice John’s neck tattoo they say nothing about it. Gerry and Pam, a couple getting by on his his postman’s salary, who foster kids to fill the gap of their own childlessness. Single mum Ella, who had a kid at 16 and can’t have any more. David and Sharon, a mixed-race blended family of natural and adopted kids. Lorraine and Trevor, who don’t want the pregnancy side of parenthood but would like a kid.
They’re all probably OK in their way, though the question framed by John’s face as he talks to each couple is “What are they trying to get out of my little boy – and how will they treat him?”
It’s all done in a highly plausible manner, on the sofas in the front rooms of the prospective new parents, with Pasolini never milking the emotion, just popping in the odd telling detail to reinforce the notion that boys need their dads – at one point while John is washing his car, Michael is aping him washing his toy truck.
There are a lot of psychos on Norton’s CV (see Happy Valley, for instance) yet he appears capable of playing almost any iteration of manhood, from the most manic and threatening all the way down the intensity gradient. Here he’s the loving, concerned dad, with just a touch of menace held back for anyone who poses a threat. Too smart to be a window cleaner? The film doesn’t really go there. And whaddya mean window cleaners aren’t smart?
Pasolini – not related to Pier Paolo Pasolini at all but in fact the nephew of another famous Italian director, Luchino Visconti – is famously the guy who brought us The Full Monty. Though he produced it rather than wrote and directed – as here – they’re films in a similar emotional terrain. Nowhere Special is a warm underdog journey. No comedy, though, not this time, though there is the odd wry smile.
Four-year-old (!) Daniel Lamont, big liquid eyes, still as a stick insect, makes an entirely plausible Michael, the kid who isn’t sure why he’s being paraded in front of so many strangers but is gradually cottoning on. Eileen O’Higgins is also punching above the material as Shona, the young social worker going a bit further than the job description to help John and Michael.
The emotional is presented as a mostly practical problem to be solved – that’s how John sees it, how Norton and co play it, and how Pasolini directs it. Like the non-intrusive acoustic soundtrack by Andrew Simon McAllister, the power of this movie derives from the power of the perfectly executed understatement. Very, very nicely done.
Nowhere Special – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
