IT’S DIFFICULT to work out just who the charming but rather idiosyncratic Finding Neverland is aimed at. A mixture of domestic drama, tragedy and exuberant fantasy, the film blends moist-eyed nostalgia with the cruel disappointments of a marriage break-up; a childlike playfulness and unpredictability with a portrait of a treacherously unforgiving and rigid Edwardian society. It could appeal to everyone from preteens to pensioners, or it could appeal to no one at all.

Ultimately this unconventionality is probably one of the film’s main strengths. And if the tone veers a little haphazardly between fantasy and cold, hard reality, well, perhaps that is the most effective way of taking us into the mind of the film’s mercurial protagonist, the author and playwright J. M. Barrie (Johnny Depp).

We meet Barrie just as his latest play has earned polite indifference from its audience. Disheartened, in search of inspiration, Barrie takes his St Bernard dog to the park and drifts off into reverie. His daydreams are interrupted by the arrival of the Llewelyn Davies family — four high-spirited boys and their lovely widowed mother Sylvia (Kate Winslet). Barrie bonds immediately with the boys, but is particularly drawn to Peter (Freddie Highmore — a rapidly rising young talent), an unhappy little boy who has lost the knack of being a child after the death of his father. Barrie, who finds it equally hard to be an adult, is determined to help Peter rediscover his childhood.

The friendship with the Llewelyn Davies family is initially encouraged by Barrie’s wife Mary (an impressive Radha Mitchell), predominantly because they come with that all-important accessory in polite society — a powerful and connected elderly relative (Julie Christie plays the fearsome Mrs du Maurier). But as the gossips begin to snipe about her husband’s close relationship with Sylvia, Mary’s goodwill curdles and their marriage starts to cool under the strain.

Meanwhile, more heartbreak awaits the Llewelyn Davies family as Sylvia develops cancer. And this is where the film doesn’t quite ring true; even made up to look consumptive and sickly, Winslet is so gorgeously, rosily robust — she looks like the kind of no-nonsense public schoolgirl who would find cancer a mild inconvenience. Sylvia’s illness is also the moment when the director, Marc Forster (see interview), starts to crank up the sentiment in the movie — the most conventional element of this otherwise joyfully unexpected film.

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