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| The cast of X+Y at the BFI London Film Festival. |
X+Y is a spectacularly good film - one that makes you laugh out loud, care deeply about its characters, cry in sympathy, and wonder what happened to them next. That it's a debate feature from director Morgan Matthews and writer James Graham is even more impressive, and I really hope this British indie film gets the release and recognition it deserves.
The film is about a young autistic maths prodigy called Nathan who carries the trauma of his father's death in a car accident. His loving mother Julie (Sally Hawkins) manages to get him extra maths tuition with a teacher called Mr Humphreys (Rafe Spall) who was also a maths prodigy but has been beaten down by Multiple Sclerosis and know self-medicates with alcohol and a kind of ruthlessly funny defensive humour. Somehow, Mr Humphreys manages to make a connection with Nathan, and gets him to enter into an international maths olympiad, in which he leaves for a selection camp in Taiwan, meets a girl, and discovers what's truly important to him.
