Director: Scott McGehee, David Siegel, 12A, 105min
Stars: Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Flora Cross
On general release
Our appetite for American cinema can sometimes seem insatiable. But as this earnest family drama demonstrates, there are some US movies that just don’t travel.
Directed by Siegel and McGehee (who accrued much goodwill with their last film, The Deep End), Bee Season explores the fragmentation of a family by comparing the spelling bee successes of the youngest member, Eliza (Cross), with the obsession of her father Saul (Gere) with the study of Kabbalah. US critics lauded it as a spiritually meaningful piece, but the secular British audience, associating Kabbalah with the celebrity lunatic fringe, is more likely to recoil from its more esoteric excesses.
Siegel and McGehee don’t help matters with their drippy special effects, but what really disappoints is that the film seems to believe the pseudo- spiritual flimflam it peddles.
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WENDY IDE