Since 1996 |
  
Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Since 1996 |
Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Bee Season Stars: Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Flora Cross, Max Minghella and Kate Bosworth Directors: Scott McGehee and David Siegel Scriptwriter: Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal and adapted from the novel by Myla Goldberg Music: Peter Nashel Fox Searchlight and Regency Enterprises Running Time: one hour and 45 minutes Rating: PG 13 Bee Season is one of those cases of adapting a book to the screen and not giving the audience enough to go with. I was puzzled at some situations and if it wasn't for my guest, who had read the book, I would have been lost. This is a story of a family with secrets and the story revolves around spelling bees and the unique ability of an eleven-year-old girl to visualize spelling words. Richard Gere stars as the father, who is a teacher and devotee of Kabbalah. Sometime in the past, he has tried to reach a connection to God through Kabbalah and failed. Along comes his daughter (Flora Cross), who is a champion speller and Gere figures out the girl has a special power to literally visualize the word and spell it correctly. Determined to make her a national champion, Gere forsakes his older son (Max Minghella) a talented musician, to train the speller. Coming between the struggle for sibling attention is Gere's wife (Juliette Binoche) who has flashbacks to a tragedy in her life that has never been properly handled. The family begins to fall apart with the son exploring other religions, and when the son meets Kate Bosworth in a park, you wonder what she is doing there at that particular moment. The mother disappears for hours on end and in the meantime, the national spelling bee is coming soon, way too soon. Bee Season is well acted, particularly by Richard Gere as a controlling husband and father and Flora Cross as the daughter who is wise beyond her years. Unfortunately, Juliette Binoche, as the mother, is short-changed and I was off on a red herring as to what she was doing. On a single day that most of us would dread, Gere learns of his wife's situation and of his son at a Hare Krishna house. Since the film was shot in San Francisco, the only other thing to happen would have been an earthquake. Bee Season is beautifully photographed (Giles Nuttgens) and this aids the story especially with the visualization of spelling words. There are tense moments concerning the spelling bees and situations showing favoring one child over another. Gere's moments with Cross are well done as he tries to explain a tenet of Kabbalahism to her. Minghella's character is shallow compared to the rest of the cast. The audience can't grasp his emotional conflicts. This is one film where one
more scene or dialogue could have helped, especially with Juliette Binoche.
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