Review of Bee Season (2005) by Markb. — 03 Dec 2005

"Bee" warned--this is NOT, for the most part, the heartwarming, feel-good family drama that the trailers seem to want you to think it is. Neither is it a fictional variant on the superb, Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound; even though a nationwide spelling bee is vital to the plot, directors Scott McGhee and David Siegel (The Deep End) seem to go out of their way to avoid emphasizing it until the very end.

That's because this film version of Myla Goldberg's acclaimed novel is, rightly, much more interested in why its central family seems to have everything--they're extremely well-to-do, success-oriented, highly educated, religiously grounded and seemingly very close and loving-- but is in reality (and beyond the father's perception) very close to totally imploding.

The spelling competition merely serves as the straw that stirs the drink. Although I haven't read Goldberg's book, this movie played to me like a really good, intelligent short story (with some interesting surface similarities to D.

H. Lawrence's The Rocking Horse Winner). If you attune yourself to its purposely slow rhythms and fascinating use of silence as not only a barrier to communication but also a means of communicating in and of itself, you'll love the four lead acting performances.

Flora Cross as the possibly supernaturally gifted speller, who learns that sometimes gifts are best used in the service of drawing loved ones together, and Max Minghella as her equally sensitive and gifted but neglected older brother are remarkable, never missing the mark or hitting a false note, while the blend of elegance and fragility that makes Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) such a compelling performer has never been more effectively used than here.

As for Richard Gere, he just keeps getting better and better; his early performances in American Gigolo and even Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven left the impression of a very attractively wrapped package with nothing inside, which is probably why he came off so much better in his pair of Becoming A Better Person With The Help Of Miss Right romances, An Officer and a Gentleman and Pretty Woman.

Three years ago Gere gave his all-time best performance, cast against type as Diane Lane's shy, cuckolded husband in Unfaithful; he almost matches it here as a Jewish scholar who's so rigid and focused on his studies that he seems totally unable to direct his attention and love to one family member at a time.

He's eventually set straight by an unlikely source, but the message is clear: intense examination of one's religion as a means of getting closer to God may be all well and good, but perhaps He would be far more pleased with someone who puts a few of his books down and devotes himself a little more to caring for and protecting the wife and kids that God has entrusted him with.