Sometimes, well-meaning filmmakers try to pack way too much information, plot lines, and underlying messages into one movie, making for disastrous results.
Bee Season is one of those films.
Try this on for size: The effects of an overcontrolling father. Family dysfunction. Spiritual and emotional crisis. The ability to talk to God through the study of Kabbalah. Whether Hare Krishna followers really are better dancers.
Okay, I made that last one up. But the ideas go on and on and on here until you’re dizzy and none of them make sense.
Based on a best-selling novel about the unravelling of an American family, and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel (The Deep End), Bee Season begins with such promise.
Audiences meet the attractive Bay-area Naummann family led by Saul (Richard Gere), an overzealous religious studies scholar who also cooks, plays violin and looks great in tweed.
His children are both intellectual and artistic wonders, with the daughter Eliza (newcomer Flora Cross) on her way to the national spelling bee championship and the son Aaron (Max Minghella) studying Hebrew and able to play ’cello.
The only mystery is Saul’s wife, Miriam, played by French actress Juliette Binoche, a scientist who disappears for long hours when she isn’t doing the dishes after dinner.
The film’s plot revolves around what happens when Saul discovers his daughter’s spelling talents and diverts all of his available attention — and it’s clear he doesn’t have much because he’s the family star — to her.
Suddenly, those father-son violin-’cello concerts aren’t happening anymore in Saul’s study.
He rebels by considering conversion to Hare Krishna after meeting an attractive follower named Chali (Kate Bosworth).
Miriam’s absences from the house grow longer and longer.
Saul becomes convinced that Eliza’s understanding of words means she should also study the Kabbalah in an attempt to talk to God.
Oy vey!
Despite the beautiful photography and touches of magic realism — when Eliza spells, things grow out of her blouse or appear as birds fluttering around an auditorium — there’s a very heavy-handed, overwrought tone in Bee Season that’s going to drive a lot of people crazy.
What isn’t off-putting is the breakthrough performance of newcomer Cross, who is not only a gorgeous child but has a magnificent screen presence.
She recalls a more refined, young Jodie Foster with her adorable cleft chin and big, blue eyes that penetrate your soul.
BOTTOM LINE
All sort of things are going on in this movie but not much of them make sense.
But newcomer Flora Cross recalls a young Jodie Foster in her role as the wise-beyond-her-years spelling bee champ who may or may not be able to talk to God.
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