Spellbound

Reviewed by EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating * * * * *)

Nine million children aged from 12 to 14 compete through school, state and regional eliminations for the 249 places in the live, televised final of the US National Spelling Bee in Washington each year.

Jeff Blitz's documentary of the 1999 competition focuses on eight. There's the valiant, unsupported struggle of the black kid from a one-parent family in the nation's capital, contrasted against the Google-spinning, university library-endowed, rote learning of an Indian immigrant in California, trailer trash out of the Springer show and a Mexican family on a ranch in Texas.

Enthralling. Frightening in its obsessiveness. Someone wonders if the contest isn't "some different form of child abuse;" an icy, ironic, calculated portrait of the American Dream turning nightmare.

DVD, video rental Out now