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Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (The)
- Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
- Writer: Jean-Pierre Jeunet; Guillaume Laurant
- Producer: Francis Boespflug; Frédéric Brillion
CGiii Comment
What a magical little film...
Now, it all depends upon your way of looking at things...whether there is subtext or not. Reading between the lines...and, considering the protective mother vs the distant father...there is...
Apart from the obvious charm...there is a stream of melancholia that runs throughout. Suspend all disbelief...and then, you will enter the mind of a child - riddled with facts, figures and guilt.
Sadly, Bonham Carter is grossly under-used...but, Kyle Catlett delivers a remarkable performance for one so young...practically carrying the entire film.
It's gentle, it's silly...but, that tinge of sadness keeps it tangible.
One for the escapists...that child in us all.
A delight.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
T.S. Spivet lives on a ranch in Montana with his mother who is obsessed with the morphology of beetles, his father (a cowboy born a hundred years too late) and his 14 year-old sister who dreams of becoming Miss America. T.S. is a 10 year-old prodigy with a passion for cartography and scientific inventions. One day, he receives an unexpected call from the Smithsonian museum telling him that he is the winner of the very prestigious Baird prize for his discovery of the perpetual motion machine and that he is invited to a reception in his honor where he is expected to give a speech. Without telling anyone, he sets out on a freight train across the U.S.A. to reach Washington DC. There is also Layton, twin brother of T.S., who died in an accident involving a firearm in the family's barn, which no one ever speaks of. T.S. was with him, measuring the scale of the gunshots for an experiment, and he doesn't understand what happened.
Cast & Characters
Kyle Catlett as T.S. Spivet;
Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Clair;
Judy Davis as G.H. Jibsen;
Callum Keith Rennie as Father;
Niamh Wilson as Gracie;
Jakob Davies as Layton;
Rick Mercer as Roy;
Dominique Pinon as Two Clouds / Deux Nuages;
Julian Richings as Ricky;
Richard Jutras as Mr. Stenpock;
Mairtin O'Carrigan as Lecturer;
Michel Perron;
Dawn Ford as Marge;
Harry Standjofski as Policeman;
Susan Glover