Bee Season - Palm Beach Post movie review

'Bee Season': Spellbinding performances

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

The comic tension of a spelling bee has already been well-mined in the 2002 Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound and the current Broadway musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Still, there is an inherent fascination in watching youngsters spelling words they will surely never encounter again, as they do in Bee Season.

Fox Searchlight Pictures

'Bee Season'

B+

The verdict: An anatomy of a dissolving family, set against a youngster's spelling bee triumphs.

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

Unlike the documentary and the stage show, this fiction film goes far beyond the bee to a story of spirituality, mysticism and an affluent, but rudderless Oakland, Calif., family.

Curious things happen in the Naumann household once Eliza, 11, reveals an unexpected facility for spelling. Her father, a religious-studies professor who specializes in the kabbalah, takes an interest in her upon learning that she won her school's bee and is heading toward district, state and, hopefully, national competitions.

For Saul (Richard Gere), it is an opportunity to test his belief that through word power, one can reach "the ear of God." He begins coaching her, not with spelling drills but by encouraging the girl to look within herself to see the letters form in their proper order. And that is exactly what happens. Perhaps she has found a way to communicate with God, the film suggests.

Meanwhile, her previously favored older brother Aaron (Max Minghella, director Anthony's son) drifts away from the family's Jewish faith. He investigates other religions and soon becomes ensnared by a Hari Krishna sect.

At the same time, Eliza's scientist mother Miriam (Juliette Binoche) strays into other homes in the neighborhood, drawn by cut-glass objects that catch the sunlight, fixated by the way they remind her of the broken glass of her parents' automobile-crash death. Based on Myla Goldberg's novel, screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (mother of actors Jake and Maggie) renders this achingly human story with its enigmatic edges intact. Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel take the film far beyond conventional expectations, as they did with the parental tale The Deep End.

They coax a wonderful performance from young Flora Cross as Eliza, who conveys her inner burdens deftly. Gere seems a commercial casting consideration, though he does project a genuine affection for his daughter. And the fragile Binoche lends a definite credence to the sketchy role of Miriam that helps the film's interior balance.