Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Kyle Catlett, Helena Bonham Carter, Callum Keith Rennie, Niamh Wilson, Jakob Davies, Judy Davis
Certificate: 12
Synopsis: A ten-year-old cartographer secretly leaves his family’s ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother and travels across the country aboard a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.
Director Jean-Pierre Jenuet paints a distinctive pallet of work from DELICATESSEN (1991) to A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT (2004), but you’d probably be most familiar with the wonderful AMELIE starring Audrey Tautou. Never a stranger to taking an alternative look at a story, his beautiful visuals continue in THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS T.S. SPIVET alongside a strong blood-beating heart to take hold of.
T.S. SPIVET tells the story of its namesake, a ten-year boy who’s a genius and impeccably portrayed by Kyle Catlett in his feature film debut. Spivet lives in Montana with his family on a ranch and has a gift for cartography and invention but not just creations thrown together from broken bikes in the back garden, these have vast scientific scope. As he continues to invent things, his seemingly disjointed family continues to operate around him as usual. His Mother collects beetles, his sister is obsessed with leaving to eventually become Miss America and his father, as we learn, would be a Cowboy but is 100-years too late. These characters aren’t clichés though, they’ve got something going on underneath and we soon learn that Spivet also used to have a twin brother, Layton, who tragically died in their barn after a gun accident.
As we move forward, we explore Spivet’s disillusion with his life and when he gets a call from the Smithsonian museum (the world’s largest research complex) to say he’s won a prestigious award, he sees it as a chance to escape to Washington DC to collect it but here we have the first problem, they believe he’s an adult. It’s important to note this isn’t your standard ‘road-trip’ affair and although our lead character does pretends to be his father on the phone, this also isn’t anything like HOME ALONE or kids trying to be adults, it’s about his emotional journey and the fact that despite T.S. Spivet being a young prodigy, he’s just a young kid trying to make sense of his life.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s adaptation of the Reif Larsen’s books ‘The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet’ is beautifully crafted and deserves all the attention it can get. Without delving more into the narrative, this isn’t a story that hides away from neither truth nor consequences but manages to be a perfectly weaved journey of innocence and self-awareness of a younger perspective. The film also explores the nature of grief and how it affects different people but, once again, the contrast doesn’t create a world that’s dark and sinister. The visual quality (and one of the best recent uses of 3D) is second-to-none as we stunningly explore America in complementary hues that give the film a unique still-photography distinction.
THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS T.S. SPIVET is a poignant, charming and curious adventure that’s exquisitely filmed with innovative actors fuelled with energy, hope and reality. It finds a perfect place away from the usual comfort zone and entices you in. Jeunet and his cast give us a refreshing meander through intelligence that’s ahead of its years, must like T.S. Spivet himself.
[usr=4] THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS T.S. SPIVET is available to buy now on DVD and on digital download from Entertainment One UK.
