Gifted

Gifted (2017) is built around the custody of a child who is a mathematical prodigy, and its real question is not what she can do but what she will be allowed to become. Mary is seven and extraordinarily gifted at mathematics. Her uncle Frank sends her to an ordinary state school in Florida, works on boats, and wants her to have a normal childhood. Then her grandmother Evelyn appears and goes to court to have her placed in a specialist programme. The conflict is not between a good person and a bad one. Evelyn is not wrong: the girl really is exceptional and the ability could be wasted. Frank is not wrong either: his own sister, Mary's mother, was raised under exactly that pressure and killed herself. The mother left work behind, on an unsolved mathematical problem. In the final section we learn what it was and why it was never published, and it explains the whole story. Mckenna Grace was ten and carries the weight of the film without falling into the cuteness trap child performances usually fall into. Marc Webb had previously made the Amazing Spider-Man films; the smaller scale suits him better. The courtroom section is predictable and the weakest part of it. It runs 101 minutes. Good for: family drama, custody stories, and films that are light but not empty. Less good for: it involves a suicide, the sentiment rises in places, and the ending is too neat.