X+Y

A film about mathematics set in England. Nathan is autistic. He is comfortable with numbers and not with people, and arranges the food on his plate by prime numbers. He got on well with his father. The man dies in a road accident and the boy never speaks the same way again. His mother does not stop trying. Julie does not know how to approach her son and is rebuffed every time. They find a teacher. Martin competed himself once; he is ill, sardonic, and comes to lessons irregularly. Nathan enters the trials for the international olympiad. From there the film moves to a training camp. A programme in Taiwan, students from other countries, and constant testing. He meets Zhang Mei. She is from the Chinese team and the two begin working together. Nathan struggles. Many of the students at the camp are faster than he is, and this is happening to him for the first time. What the narrative is interested in is not talent but contact: what the film really wonders is not how far Nathan will get in mathematics but whether he can learn to touch someone. Martin's line runs in parallel. He is dealing with his own illness and a slow closeness forms between him and the mother. The depiction of autism is arguable. The narrative repeats certain patterns and softens them deliberately. The film came out of a documentary. In 2007 the director made a documentary following the olympiad team, and the fiction film grew from that work. Asa Butterfield, Rafe Spall, Sally Hawkins and Eddie Marsan are in the cast. Morgan Matthews directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet British drama and stories about talent. Who it is not for: anyone expecting mathematics; the film barely shows a problem and the last section slides into melodrama.