Grade: C

The “Bee” in the title refers to the spelling variety, but anyone expecting another “Spellbound” from this movie is going to be very much disappointed. One of the members of the Naumann family that we watch disintegrating in Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s film (adapted by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal from a novel by Myla Goldberg) is, to be sure, an eleven-year old girl who proves almost preternaturally successful in spelling competitions, calmly progressing from her school’s tryouts to the national championship. But in “Bee Season,” little Eliza (Flora Cross) isn’t just talented with letters; according to her father Saul (Richard Gere), she’s one of those chosen individuals who can tap into the most rarefied regions of reality, those profound areas embraced in the Kabbalah, that ancient form of Jewish mysticism in which–we’re told–the deepest secrets of the cosmos are comprehended in the alphabet. That’s not all, however. While Saul and Eliza together grasp at those universal truths through their spelling training, Aaron (Max Minghella), the girl’s older brother, is seeking his own route to higher understanding–an effort that takes him, through the agency of an attractive recruiter named Chali (Kate Bosworth), into the Hare Krishna movement. And most bewildering of all, Saul’s scientist wife Miriam (Juliette Binoche), apparently haunted by the memory of her parents’ death in an automobile accident, suffers a mental breakdown involving an obsession with stealing objects that she then arranges into a huge collage–an apparent illustration of an idea found in the Kabbalah about how things that have been broken can be restored to wholeness. (Presumably the suggestion being made here is that the Naumann family fabric can eventually be put back together again too, although the narrative remains suspended on that point.)

Like McGehee and Siegel’s previous films, “Suture” and “The Deep End,” this one is lovingly crafted–Giles Nuttgens’ widescreen lensing is lustrous, Kelly McGehee’s production design elegant, and Peter Nashel’s music score subtly effective. But it doesn’t succeed in articulating its ideas coherently or dramatizing them effectively. “Bee Season” is handsome to look at but both emotionally inert and thematically muddled. The individual family members’ fascination with spiritual fulfillment coincides with the family’s disintegration as a unit, but what are we to read from this? That the fascination itself causes the collapse? Or that it offers the only hope to forestall or counteract it? Or both? The picture never makes clear which of the options it’s promoting–or whether it’s promoting any at all. Still, the ambiguity might have carried weight if it had been conveyed with dramatic power. That it doesn’t is partially due to McGehee and Siegel’s direction, which seems over-controlled and showy, and from structural inadequacies in Gyllenhaal’s script, which–for example–doesn’t sufficiently clarify the reasons behind Miriam’s breakdown and simply lops off young Aaron’s side of the story with no resolution whatsoever. But the film’s weakness also derives from casting problems. Gere never convinces as a rabbinical scholar, and Binoche seems all wrong as Miriam, getting the character’s fragility right but little else. (Indeed, one even wonders why the character–who’s supposedly a convert to Judaism from Catholicism, would have the name Miriam in the first place.) And while Minghella–son of director Anthony–captures Max’s moroseness, by the end one might think he’s done so entirely too well, exhibiting little else. Cross, meanwhile, is directed to project a general impassivity to suggest Eliza’s older-than-her-years soulfulness, and while that’s a perfectly defensible choice, it doesn’t make her an immediately sympathetic young protagonist.

The upshot is that “The Bee Season” is one of those films you can perhaps appreciate analytically but never really connect with. Ultimately one can admire the struggle of the Naumanns somehow to talk to God, but it would be nice if they said something intelligible to us in the process. As it is, while they’re striving, each in his own way, for enlightenment, their efforts leave us resolutely in the dark–and not just because the lights are out in the auditorium.

C

The adventures of a young boy attempting to cross much of continental Europe in an effort to reach Denmark after escaping a prison camp in communist Bulgaria is the subject of Paul Feig’s adaptation of Anne Holm’s novel “North to Freedom.” The picture is certainly well-intentioned, but its episodic structure and rather slack approach are unlikely to generate much excitement among the family audiences at which it’s targeted.

David (Ben Tibber, looking a bit well-fed for the part of a long-time detainee) is an understandably glum, uncommunicative youngster who’s known nothing but the camp all his life. He has no relatives there (though his dreams may be of his absent mother), only an older protector–an almost saintly, bespectacled man named Johannes (Jim Caviezel) who undertakes to protect him against the stern commandant (Hristo Shopov). After a particularly cruel incident, David’s escape is arranged, though we aren’t told why and by whom until the final reel, with instructions that he must stow away on a ship bound for Italy and thence make his way through Switzerland to freedom in Denmark. The reason for that destination is also withheld until the surprise ending.

David’s journey is, of course, an eventful one, but in the fashion of Disney live-action movies in which the danger doesn’t seem all that threatening and the attitude of most of the people the boy encounters turns out to be helpful rather than menacing. There’s an Italian sailor named Roberto (Francesco De Vito), for example, who’s more concerned that David might have messed with his magazines than that he’s a stowaway, and who later not only aids the kid to get to the Italian shore but gives him a much-needed ride. (Roberto turns out to be a truck driver, too.) And a sweet Italian girl (Viola Carinci) whose life David saves in a bizarre sequence (her brothers have apparently tied her to a chair in a barn and set the building ablaze–something for which they’re barely punished). Her parents, an aristocratic type living in what appears to be an eighteenth-century palace complex, take the boy in for a time and teach him a good deal about the wonders of civilization before he decamps to continue his journey. And most importantly, there’s Sophie (Joan Plowright), a grandmotherly painter who sneaks David over the Swiss border, shows him much kindness, and eventually puts together the secret of David’s identity. (The recurrent presence of a non-fiction book in the course of the trip proves the key, and helps to bring about the happiest of endings.)

Feig is reasonably successful in balancing the various elements of Holm’s tale. He manages to evoke a sense of the danger of David’s predicament, particularly in the opening prison camp sequences and the flashbacks to it that periodically follow to explain the circumstances of David’s escape (and the identity of his ultimate savior). But he keeps that relatively mild, presumably so as not to scare younger viewers excessively. Indeed, as the story proceeds, most of the incident is devoted to showing that ordinary people tend not to be nasty but nice, even if “officialdom”–like police and border guards–might not be entirely welcoming. But the director doesn’t invest the episodes with enough tension or energy to keep the interest from flagging; there’s a slightly enervated feel to the proceedings that gets tiring over time. The cast go through their paces with a similar lack of pizzazz. Tibber is convincingly doleful (it’s one of the jokes that David has to be taught how to smile), but he’s certainly not charismatic, and Caviezel gets to do another of his martyr routines, striking grave, soulful poses on the way to becoming a sacrificial lamb for the second time this year–and again at the hands of Shopov, who also played Pilate in “The Passion of the Christ.” Only Plowright really adds some zest to things as the considerate, good-natured matron who takes David under her wing. On the technical side the movie is just okay, but though Roman Oman’s cinematography isn’t much more than workmanlike, at least his camera is usually focused on attractive locations (like the Italian family’s sumptuous home).

“I Am David” is a nice enough picture, but it’s also slow and meandering, and though its uplifting finale isn’t strenuous enough to be cloying, it’s not transcendent either. Watching it is like seeing a decent Family Channel movie, except in this case you have to pay for it.