Gifted ★★★½
RELATIONSHIP drama Gifted is attracting a lot of fans.
And so it should. It’s an intelligent tear-jerker, which is a rare beast indeed.
Director Marc Webb is best known for 500 Days of Summer (2009) and the two emo Spiderman movies with Andrew Garfield in 2012 and 2014.
Gifted is better than any of those, thanks mainly to an excellent first major script from Tom Flynn.
This could have been a familiar tale of a tug-of-war between relatives over a cute little girl following the death of her mother. But we’ve seen that many times.
Flynn’s script takes things beyond a strictly emotional response, delving into the responsibilities of being a parent and the impact on all the members of a family throughout their lives.
The film is also elevated by three very good – and very different – performances from Chris Evans of Captain America fame, young McKenna Grace and British veteran Lindsay Duncan.
Evans plays Frank Adler, a boat repairer. He and seven-year-old Mary (played by Grace) have lived in a small coastal town in Florida for several years since the death of Mary’s mother.
Mary is precocious but in a humorous and appealing way. She has been home-schooled by Frank but is about to attend a formal school for the first time. Their neighbour Roberta is wary and we soon learn why. Mary is a mathematics genius, courtesy of the genes provided by her late mother.
Frank is trying to honour Mary’s mother’s wishes to have her daughter brought up as an average kid, but the school’s growing awareness of her talent leads to problems that have dramatic repercussions for everyone involved.
I’m going to leave the story there because one of the joys of the film is watching the events unfold and layers of complexity being added to the relationships.
Evans produces one of those under-stated performances that he rarely gets to demonstrate due to his regular screen duties as Captain America and one of the Avengers. he’s a good actor and I’d like to see a more varied body of work from him.
McKenna Grace is 11 in real life and has been working solidly, mainly in television, for the past four years. It show; she delivers a genuine acting performance, not just in delivering her lines but also while listening and in her movements.
There are two particular moving scenes – one involving Grace climbing all over Frank while asking some of life’s basic questions and a wonderful sequence in a hospital waiting room.
As good as Grace is, the real revelation is Duncan whose previous work dating back to the mid-1970s I’m sorry to say I haven’t been aware of. As Grace’s grand-mother Evelyn she uses Tom Flynn’s script to maximum effect in ensuring our emotional response to her is constantly challenged and changing.
In another film and other hands she could easily have been the outright villain; here she becomes so much more, giving us a character that epitomises the film’s overall approach.
Some people will pick holes in the narrative and want to question the character motivations, but it’s film that does win you over in the end. It’s sweet, endearing and also makes you think.