Venice diary part three

Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal disappoint in the long-awaited 'Proof'.

Sep  7 2005

Can maths be fun? Not on the evidence of John Madden's new film 'Proof', which premiered in Venice this week and stars Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal.

'Proof' reunites Paltrow and Madden - the pair worked together in 2002 on the London stage version of David Auburn's play - but proves to be a weak dissection of both madness and intellectual precocity.

Hopkins is Robert, a formerly brilliant maths professor who dies, at the film's opening, after several years of increasing dementia. Before his death, he had been living alone with his 26-year-old daughter Catherine (Paltrow), herself a mediocre maths student who is socially at odds with the rest of the world.

Robert's death hits Catherine badly. Soon, her sister Claire (Hope Davis) suspects that Catherine may be suffering from the same mental illness as their late father.

Meanwhile, her father's former student, Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) throws a spanner in the works by deciding that Robert had been producing groundbreaking work before his death. They scour over his notebooks. Then Catherine claims that it is in fact her work, not her father's, that is causing such excitement. Is she lying? Is she crazy? Is she in the distorting throes of grief?

It's a complex affair that's treated with anything but complexity. Gyllenhaal and Paltrow may as well be discussing cheese production for all they appear to know or understand about mathematics. They simply repeat the words 'proof' and 'formula' over and over again.

The best scenes are in flashback and between Catherine and her father, but too often Paltrow confuses teenage surliness for mental instability. Ultimately it's a one-trick movie, and the path to that trick is for pedestrians only.

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