An Invisible Sign (2010)

An Invisible Sign is a sensitive treatment of the OC behaviors experienced by a former math professor (John Shea) who goes off the rails by not taking his meds, and his grade-school math (actually, arithmetic) teacher daughter (Jessica Alba), who could double for Jane the Virgin (until a closing scene, anyway). Their next-door neighbor (J.K. Simmons) owns the hardware store and has an innocent numbers fetish that only the daughter understands, and it further inspires her love of numbers and math. She perceives numbers everywhere, connects with them them, and finds solace in them. Most of the social dynamics occur in her grade-school classroom, as she works to gain her footing as an inspiration for her students and as a responsible adult, but we witness some interesting dynamics between the teacher, her mother, her students, a few of their mothers, and ultimately the neighbor. Everyone learns, grows, or moves on (in one of several senses). The only sour note to me is the school "science" teacher (Chris Messina), who is loopier than my pot-smoking high-school physics teacher, and starts chatting up the math teacher on day one. (I know he is not grooming or stalking her, but the script makes it feel like he is.) At the end, she miraculously overcomes her OC tendencies in 30 seconds, immediately before he appears uninvited outside her second-story bathroom, and they kiss for the second time. Their solution is, of course, to promptly go to bed for implied sex, since we next see her smiling demurely at his side. This scene does not ring true with the rest of her OC behavior. (Not lifestyle choices. Compulsions.) Or what I perceive to be her morality. People in this movie really connect though. Those that tell lies are generally called on it. There is empathy -- or honesty about the lack of it. There is frankness about cancer, and about death that encroaches on our right-of-way, or takes someone down. I esp. enjoyed the framing device of an animated folk tale. I liked this at least as much as Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Enjoy! 4 stars. (7-12-2016)