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'Bee Season' is a stinging look at obsession with achievement

It's true that "Bee Season" takes place in the competitive, recently celebrated world of spelling bees. But audiences expecting a Hollywood version of the quirkily adorable documentary "Spellbound" are in for a surprise: Although it opens with the familiar sight of an uncertain child standing behind a microphone, and follows that child back to her very unusual family, not a shred of cuteness is to be found in the film's running time. Not much humor, either.

Fox Searchlight Pictures 'Bee Season' 3 out of 5 stars Directors: Scott McGehee, David Siegel Cast: Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Flora Cross, Max Minghella, Kate Bosworth Run time: 104 minutes Release date: Nov. 11, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, a scene of sensuality and brief strong language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

"Bee Season" has much loftier concerns than the endearing angst of precocious middle-schoolers. But it does share with "Spellbound" an interest in the parental obsessions behind these junior achievers. In particular, it wants to give life to a bit of Kabbalistic mysticism which suggests that God resides in language, and that letters themselves "hold primal energy" that an individual might use to commune with the Creator. The filmmakers are very serious about this notion, and if their movie doesn't put it across with complete success, it's at least nice to see them refusing to dilute it for mass consumption.

Young Eliza Naumann (Flora Cross) comes from an intellectual home where extracurricular talent is the surest way to Dad's heart. Dad is Saul (Richard Gere), a scholar who emerges from his book-crammed study only to practice violin with his son or to nag his kids about their Hebrew lessons. He barely notices Eliza until he learns that (though she has never been academically distinguished) she just won the district-wide spelling bee. Suddenly, he's all about Quality Time with dictionaries and legal pads.

While Eliza's mother Miriam (Juliette Binoche) and brother Aaron watch with increasing resentment (understandable in Aaron's case, mysterious in Mom's), Saul becomes equal parts academic coach and Obi-Wan Kenobi — introducing his pupil to nonrational word games intended to increase her feeling for language. (In one, for instance, she is to close her eyes and write whatever letters come to her, as if her body were a conduit for cosmic intelligence.)

When she gets to each competition, it doesn't matter that Eliza hasn't been memorizing obscure vocabulary. The letters simply come to her, forming from wisps of air or lighting up in signs on the wall. Miriam worries about this trancelike state, and at home she begins digging up heirlooms to offer Eliza, as if tethering her to the world of flesh-and-blood family. Objects — glittering, light-splintering ones especially — fascinate Miriam in a way we don't understand until late in the film, when it becomes clear that she has her own troubled history with Saul's philosophies.

Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel approach this material with an earnestness that, however appropriate, can be off-putting. The special effects they use to suggest Eliza's experience, for example, are more effective early on, when they lean toward the whimsical, than in climactic scenes meant to convey profound, "2001"-style transcendence. Saul's ideas sound intriguing in the beginning and barely progress from there — the filmmakers can spell them out, use them in a sentence and define them, but can't quite breathe life into them.