Shane Meadows on boyhood and true romance. By TIM WONG.

IF This is England was Shane Meadows’ 400 Blows, then Somers Town is his Antonie and Colette, and Thomas Turgoose his Jean-Pierre Léaud. A casual buddy movie couched in Meadows’ fondness for adolescent relations, it centres on Turgoose – now slightly older, and slightly deeper in voice from the 12-year-old skinhead he so memorably portrayed – as a midlands runaway who befriends a lonely Polish teen in North London. Left to his own devices while father works hard and drinks late, the soft-spoken Marek (Piotr Jagiello) roams the city as a keen photographer, bonding with Turgoose’s out-of-pocket Tomo as they set about courting an attractive French waitress (Elisa Lasowki). Fashion disasters and comical odd-jobs await, courtesy of a charitable entrepreneur (Perry Benson) who, fearing for Marek’s safety, swaps the boy’s Man United strip for an Arsenal knockoff (emblazoned with “Terry Henry”), and provides the homeless Tomo with a place to crash. Their misadventures, dictated by the promise of romance, are not unlike those of Antonie Doniel, with the resemblance to François Truffaut’s breezy manchild odysseys qualified by a lightness that might’ve otherwise been eclipsed by Meadows’ darker tendencies. The naturalism of the two leads helps defy this, and just when you think Meadows is about to lurch the story towards violence, he refrains, forgoing tragic consequence for ecstatic wish fulfillment. Shot in unobtrusive black and white, the film’s modesty is its biggest charm.