Where did the boy who never grew up actually come from?

Finding Neverland, adapted by David Magee from the play by Allan Knee, and directed by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) suggests an answer, of sorts. It is an account - told with a certain amount of poetic licence - of the circumstances in which playwright J. M. Barrie created Peter Pan for the stage. It’s not quite a biopic, more a tale of origins.

Johnny Depp - dapper, austere, with a soft Scottish accent - is Barrie, recovering from a resounding failure on the stage. In the park one day, he comes across a small boy, then meets his brothers and his mother. There is an instant rapport, an immediate shift into play and pretence. Here, it seems, is the kind of intimacy he has longed for - the widowed Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her four boys, an instant family, receptive and willing to enter into the world of the imagination, to believe that a dog is a dancing bear, to don warpaint and feathers or pirate gear. Only one child, Peter (the excellent Freddie Highmore) holds back, sceptical, keeping something in reserve, unwilling to surrender to illusion and Barrie’s games.

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