Morgan Matthews's film 'x+y' is a story of a maths progidy, struggling to make sense of his life. In places it's perceptive, but it's also rather obvious: not just the central character, but just about everyone else in the mathematical world, is shown as somewhat autistic; even their teachers are socially limited (and his primary teacher faces his own battles with terminal disease). The hero is extraodinarily talented but is emotionally scarred by the death of his father; his mother is good natured but out of her depth; in the end, both of the only two girls in his world appear to fall for him. There are also some details that don't feel right: a Chinese team competing in Taiwan against a Taiwanese one; a Cambridge curiously devoid of tourists. To its credit, the film shies away from a purely triumphalist ending; but it never really goes anywhere you don't expect it to.
Review of A Brilliant Young Mind
