Prodigious protégés

Four years ago, the biggest splash at the Sundance Film Festival was dark domestic thriller The Deep End. Now the brains behind it, Scott McGehee and David Siegel, are back with more trademark cool cleverness and lush visuals in Bee Season, which gets its British premiere at the London Film Festival this weekend.

Adapted from the novel by Myla Goldberg, the film stars Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche as the parents of gifted teenager Aaron (Anthony Minghella's son, Max) and the quieter, younger Eliza (Flora Cross). When Eliza proves herself a genius at spelling, it looks like just the latest feather in the hat for a family of over-achievers. Instead, her new-found talent threatens to break them apart.

Like many long-term partners, McGehee and Siegel finish each other's sentences. "We've been working together for 15 years," says McGehee. "So these days, we can do a lot of our communicating without even speaking," concludes Siegel. Ironic then that their fascination lies with the unspoken undercurrents beneath the surface of family life.

"We've always been really interested in the post-war American tradition of melodrama," says McGehee, "Films like Minnelli's Home From The Hill and anything by Douglas Sirk - dramas that deal with a lack of communication."

Screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (yes, mother of Jake and Maggie) has said she sees Bee Season as being about "how families can become dangerous". There are no cosy life lessons here: instead, we're taken on a weird journey through everything from Hare Krishna and Kaballah to kleptomania. There's even a moment of mystical ecstasy that puts Eliza in mortal danger. Who'd have thought wordplay could be so perilous?

Gere is well-cast as the narcissistic father, a religious studies professor who lectures on the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam - a Hebrew expression that means making the world whole again - but fails to see his family coming unstuck.

"We didn't expect him to throw himself in as deep as he did," says McGehee, admiringly. The star has joked that he "spoke to every rabbi in America" in preparation.

"Richard has such a personal interest in spiritual matters that he'd show up really excited about things," remembers Siegel. "It was really charming, actually. He's kinda boyish, an enthusiast."

The directors chose Binoche to play his disturbed wife "because she's an actor who can convey a complex interior life just through her face," says Siegel. Looking at Flora Cross as Binoche's screen daughter is like seeing that face in miniature: it's a performance which steals the film from her better-known co-stars. Cross's first language is French and it was her deliberation forming English words that the directors thought fitted with Eliza's gift.

The final member of the on-screen family is the striking Max Minghella. "Our producer tipped us off to him," recalls McGehee, "because he also produced Cold Mountain and Max spent a lot of time on that set."