'BEE SEASON' HAS A WAY WITH WORDS, EMOTIONS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THOUGH DEEPLY FELT and unwaveringly thoughtful, ``Bee Season'' is something of a head-scratcher. It has intellectual heft aplenty, but the movie cracks and splits along several emotional fault lines, the points of which seem to be that close relations, as well as God, don't behave the way they ought to.

Call it a universal truth. But the movie often addresses it in shrill or contrived ways that muddle the picture's smarter aspirations.

The film is adapted from Myla Goldberg's well-received novel and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose last effort, ``The Deep End,'' made fairly absorbing family drama out of pulpy source material. They get a little artier than usual with this tale of spelling bees and spiritual searching; somewhat creepily, our pint-size word genius, Eliza Naumann, gets animated, hallucinatory letter hints when she's competing on stage.

But McGehee and Siegel mostly deal in recognizable intimate conflicts. Saul Naumann (Richard Gere, as perfectly cast as he's ever been) is a hotshot Berkeley theology professor. He's rather full of himself and dominates daughter Eliza (first-timer Flora Cross), teenager Aaron (Max Minghella, director Anthony's son) and medical researcher wife Miriam (Juliette Binoche) by sheer force of brain and personality.

But as overbearing as he can sometimes be, Saul is a pretty positive force in his family's lives, playing string duets with Aaron, romantically solicitous toward Miriam, and usually willing to make dinner and clean up afterward. But when odd little Eliza begins winning those spelling contest, Saul concentrates his attention on coaching her - and on exploring the possibility that her gift for letters may be a sign that she has a rare, kabbalistic connection directly to God.

OK, that's kind of weird - and maybe unwarranted pressure to place on an introverted little girl. But it's mom and brother who react extremely to what the movie seems to regard as Saul's betrayal of them. Aaron skips Hebrew school to take up with a hot Hare Krishna (as you would, too, if you were a teenage boy; she's played by Kate Bosworth), while Miriam's hidden habit of stealing trinkets from unoccupied homes reaches a crisis point (as if it hadn't been a problem for years before).

While several psychological bases are presented for (especially) Miriam's behavior, the general drift of the piece is that most of this family's dysfunction is Daddy's fault. Considering what a committed, nurturing force Saul is in his loved ones' lives - and compared to the wretched parental failures in such contemporaneous films as ``Chumscrubber,'' ``Thumbsucker'' and ``The Squid and the Whale'' - you'd think that ``Bee Season'' might cut him a little more slack for the relatively minor infractions of egomania and favoritism.

But then, you don't win spelling bees without a perfect score. That's one of the differences between games and life.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

BEE SEASON - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: sex, language)

Starring: Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Flora Cross, Max Minghella, Kate Bosworth.

Directors: Scott McGehee and David Siegel.

Running time: 1 hr. 40 min.

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; The Grove, Farmers Market; Landmark NuWilshire, Santa Monica; Edwards University Town Center, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Odd family drama that touches on religious differences, parental preference for one child over another, compulsive dementia and spooky trances during spelling bees. Intelligent, except for an underlying thesis that it appears to be all Daddy's fault.

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While coaching his gifted daughter (Flora Cross) to a spelling bee victory, a theology professor (Richard Gere) allows his other family relationships to suffer in ``Bee Season.''