Bee Season

Rating PG-13 Formats DVD Genre drama Starring Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Flora Cross, Max Minghella, Kate Bosworth Directed by Scott McGehee, David Siegel Publisher 20th Century Fox External Links Official Bee Season Website Official 20th Century Fox Website

While it advertises itself as the story of a young spelling bee wiz struggling with her domineering father, Bee Season is actually an ensemble piece that follows the spiritual struggles of an entire nuclear family. While the actual premise has more potential than the advertised premise, this film lives up to neither, suffering as it does from poor character development.

This is not to say that the film is poorly acted, at least not across the board. What we have instead are sometimes compelling performances of less-than-compelling characters. Juliette Binoche, for example, delivers a finely nuanced take on Miriam Naumann, a character not worthy of her talents.

Miriam is, for want of a better term, a "surprise" character. She is introduced to us as a normal, caring mother. Then, in the third actïsurprise!ïshe's a severely traumatized woman with a long-running secret life as a kleptomaniac.

While it is generally a good idea to have characters change and become more complex over the course of a film, characterization is reduced to contrivance when the surprise is an impossible one. In this case, it is not possible that anyone could have hidden the level of neurosis that afflicts Miriam. Her introduction was a red herring meant to cleverly mislead us, but instead it creates a character that just doesn't work.

Eliza, the whiz herself, is brought to us with less dramatic skill. Flora Cross plays her role with an unshakably flat affect, a dead-pan for all occasions. Perhaps we are supposed to see her as the stereotypically emotionless genius. Even so, an occasional glimmer in the eyes or a slight suggestion of a smileïanything to suggest the possibility of emotion would have added a much-missed richness from her role. After all, this kid is supposed to be not just a great speller, but a spiritual savant.

Yes, Eliza is not skilled at spelling because she can memorize words well, but because she is close to God. In fact, she is able to find the spelling for words she does not know by closing her eyes and letting a still, small voice within her whisper the letters to her.

The moments when Eliza does go into her mystic spelling trance are tinged with computer-animation-enhanced melodrama. Origami birds float around the bleachers, or flowers begin to sprout out of Eliza's shirt to remind us that she is having a spiritual experience. It is as if directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel are hoping to make up in visual aid what they have instructed young Ms. Cross to suppress in her performance. In any case, Eliza is less than adequate as a protagonist. In spite of special powers, her arc is shallow and her development next to nil.

Aaron (Max Minghella), Eliza's elder brother is so deeply riddled with teen angst that, when his father (Richard Gere) stops playing violin with him to spend more time with Eliza, runs away from home to join a Hare Krishna temple. Minghella plays his role well, giving a credible movement to Aaron's's struggles. Unfortunately, Bee Season's script does not give Aaron enough motivation to behave the way he does, and so Minghella's performance, seems overplayed.

This brings us to Saul, the theology professor and Kabbalist who drives his daughter, not just to become a spelling bee champ, but to reach the heart of God through her gift with letters. For those with a spiritual inclination, the mentor/pupil relationship between Saul and his girl will be of interest. Their journey into Jewish mysticism drives the film and is occasionally a source of real suspense.

Saul pushes Eliza deep into trance states, and she ends up going too far. But Gere does not play his man with the kind of driving edge we would expect of such a figure. Gere is too sympathetic in his role (not a compliment), which contributes to our sense that Aaron is overreacting, and also makes Eliza seem unmotivated in her final decision, a decision upon which hangs the entire effect of the narrative.

Saul's Kabbalah studies are interesting and make the film watchable, but they never connect with Eliza's spelling talent or Miriam's neurosis in a meaningful way. Bee Season suffers from a cast of characters with souls too shallow for the spiritual crises they pretend to endure.