X + Y is a small intimate film that is sporadically amusing but suffers from a lightness of plot and an ending which to me smacks of 'we could not of think of how to end this film so this is how we leave things.'
Nathan (Asa Butterfield) is a high functioning autistic boy who excels in mathematics but cannot lacks displaying emotion to his mother (Sally Hawkins.) He lives an ordered life where he has his own rituals such as having certain types of food but he certainly not the touchy, feely kind of lad
As a young boy he was involved in a car accident that left his father dead. Over the course of the film we find out that the younger Nathan had a connection with his father and his death has left with some unresolved emotions.
Nathan gets extra maths tuition from his gruff school teacher (Rafe Spall) himself a child maths prodigy now struggling with Multiple Sclerosis. The film takes a turn when Nathan is selected to go to Taiwan to be in with a chance of joining the British team competing to at the International Mathematics Olympiad to be held at Cambridge. The team coach is played by Eddie Marsan who has to handle these various maths prodigies, a lot of them seem to nerds, geeks and high functioning autistic.
Here he meets a girl who is part of the Chinese team which makes him look differently at the world and give him a chance to emotionally connect.
I like the way film had some biting humour thanks to Marsan and Spall. The Taiwanese location shooting added a nice dimension to the film. However the screenplay never felt fully developed or was just choppily edited. I could never understand how Nathan went from a maths prodigy to suddenly be able to learn Chinese or play the piano and there was a love triangle set up which went nowhere.
However the ending felt too left field and left me dissatisfied.
Nathan (Asa Butterfield) is a high functioning autistic boy who excels in mathematics but cannot lacks displaying emotion to his mother (Sally Hawkins.) He lives an ordered life where he has his own rituals such as having certain types of food but he certainly not the touchy, feely kind of lad
As a young boy he was involved in a car accident that left his father dead. Over the course of the film we find out that the younger Nathan had a connection with his father and his death has left with some unresolved emotions.
Nathan gets extra maths tuition from his gruff school teacher (Rafe Spall) himself a child maths prodigy now struggling with Multiple Sclerosis. The film takes a turn when Nathan is selected to go to Taiwan to be in with a chance of joining the British team competing to at the International Mathematics Olympiad to be held at Cambridge. The team coach is played by Eddie Marsan who has to handle these various maths prodigies, a lot of them seem to nerds, geeks and high functioning autistic.
Here he meets a girl who is part of the Chinese team which makes him look differently at the world and give him a chance to emotionally connect.
I like the way film had some biting humour thanks to Marsan and Spall. The Taiwanese location shooting added a nice dimension to the film. However the screenplay never felt fully developed or was just choppily edited. I could never understand how Nathan went from a maths prodigy to suddenly be able to learn Chinese or play the piano and there was a love triangle set up which went nowhere.
However the ending felt too left field and left me dissatisfied.