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3.5 stars (out of 5)

Drawing from his experiences making the documentary Beautiful Young Minds, director Morgan Matthews’ character drama has a protagonist on the autism spectrum and unable to properly feel or understand emotions, and yet, somehow, it’s still pleasingly moving.

“I think I see the world differently to others”, explains Nathan (Asa Butterfield) in an opening voice-over, and he does too. Diagnosed as in some way autistic as a kid, the teenage Nathan struggles to comprehend the world around him and connect with his Mum Julie (Sally Hawkins), his plight complicated by memories of the traumatic death of his Dad (Martin McCann) when he was very young. A mathematical genius, Nathan is grudgingly tutored by Martin Humphreys (Rafe Spall), a former prodigy who’s given it all up (and almost everything else) due to his worsening multiple sclerosis. Nevertheless, Martin pushes Nathan toward competing in the International Mathematics Olympiad, and soon Nathan’s jetting off to Taipei for the trials and meeting one of the Chinese team’s members, Zhang Mei (Jo Yang), with whom he might be able to develop something approaching a genuine friendship.

Featuring strong work from Butterfield in a difficult role and Spall in a showy one, this low-key effort manages (like The Theory Of Everything) to almost make you feel like you understand maths – almost – while also suggesting that, in the end, there’s actually little point in bothering when understanding each other is so much more important.