Review: 'The Last Tree' is a touching portrait of a boy growing up alienated in London

Calling “The Last Tree” a coming-of-age story is both accurate and inadequate, because the brief descriptor doesn’t begin to hint at the emotion and insight writer-director Shola Amoo packs into this intense drama.

The story starts in the English countryside, with a Black boy, Femi (Tai Golding), who’s about 11 or 12, playing in a muddy field with three white friends. The opening shots of Femi and his friends — just playing rough, having fun and ignoring everything outside of their circle — are poignant, in part because we know they won’t last.

Femi is a foster child, living with Mary (Denise Black), who loves her charges like they were her own. But they’re not, and that point is made with shattering force when Femi’s Nigerian-born mother, Yinka (Gbemisola Ikumelo), comes after several years, with plans to reclaim her son. Femi doesn’t want to go, but Mary tearfully informs him he has no choice.

Yinka takes Femi to London, to a small apartment on a council estate (what in America they’d call “the Projects”). Femi quickly learns that Yinka, who has lived a hard life, demands that Femi do his chores — and gets physically violent when he disobeys her. Femi also finds school difficult, getting into a fight on the first day of class.

After establishing young Femi’s new life in London, the movie abruptly jumps ahead, to Femi as a teen, played by Samuel Adewunmi. (The cut suggests the story has a three-part structure, similar to “Moonlight.”) Teen Femi has settled into London life, though still at odds with his mother. Mostly, Femi hangs out with his friends at school, until he’s befriended by Mace (Demmy Ladipo), the neighborhood crime lord. Femi also finds time to talk to Tope (Ruthxjiah Bellenea), a shy student who shares Femi’s secret passion for The Cure.

In the third act, Aloo’s theme of finding home where you can is taken in another direction, when Yinka brings Femi to Nigeria to connect with his roots — and the father he never knew.

Aloo captures the details of Femi’s two lives, and the juxtaposition of Mary’s quiet country home and the airless box that is Yinka’s apartment, with solid detail and sensitivity. The filmmaker also draws a powerful performance from Adewumni, who conveys the hurt and the survival instinct in Femi with spare gestures and soulful eyes. It’s a breakout portrayal that helps make “The Last Tree” so much more than your ordinary coming-of-age story.

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‘The Last Tree’

★★★1/2

Available Friday, June 26, as a VOD rental on most platforms, and through virtual cinemas (including SLFS@Home). Not rated, but probably R for violence, drug use and language. Running time: 98 minutes.