If the last effort from directing team Scott McGehee and David Siegel was “The Deep End,” their latest work, “Bee Season,” might be fairly dubbed “Kiddie Pool.” It’s not so much because this story focuses equally on two children-who could have been serious enough subjects-but because it barely skims the surface of a story that, in book form, was rich and somewhat profound.

We have a scholar father (Richard Gere), a career-minded mother (Juliette Binoche), a spiritually hungry teenage son (Max Minghella), and a quiet little daughter (Flora Cross). They are all yearning, in their own ways and for their own reasons, for some sort of spiritual fulfillment. When the daughter, Eliza, suddenly demonstrates a truly remarkable gift for spelling, she hopes that it will bring her closer to her family. But it’s nobody’s fault when her gift-and her father’s subsequent devotion to her development-disturbs a fragile balance within the family.

Like a satellite with a degrading orbit, it is only a matter of time before everything begins disintegrating.

It’s an old cliché that Hollywood’s film adaptations are disappointing. But not every adaptation fails: The better ones, such as Sally Potter’s “Orlando” (not of Hollywood) and last year’s “We Don’t Live Here Anymore,” realize that the film must be its own creature, inspired but independent of its source material.

When done improperly, as in this case, they take a brilliantly rendered inner world, gloss the highlights of the plot, sex up whatever they can find, and sacrifice character development to gimmicks and beautiful visuals that do nothing to give you a deeper sense of the characters’ motivations.

Which is not to say that it was painful to sit through. It’s lyrically rendered, and the young actors are just as beautiful and capable as the veterans. But several opportunities that would have let a viewer - even one who couldn’t compare the film to the book - relate to and care about this family were totally missed. Who wouldn’t want to see a story about regular people who are struggling to be remarkable, rather than remarkable people who are struggling to be normal?
Hollywood wouldn’t, I guess.

COURTESY PHOTO

Caption: Saul Naumann (Richard Gere) takes a mystical interest in the spelling ability of his daughter Eliza (Flora Cross) in “Bee Season.”