Asa Butterfield X+Y

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Sally Hawkins, Rafe Spall, Eddie Marsan
Director: Morgan Mathews
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Running Time: 111 minutes

Synopsis: X+Y follows Nathan, an awkward, idiosyncratic teenager, grappling with the sudden death of the one person who understood him; his father. As he struggles to connect with those around him, he is introduced to an anarchic and unconventional maths teacher who takes Nathan under his wing.

Soon Nathan finds himself selected for the UK Mathematics Squad and, against the odds, representing his country in Taipei. Over there, the academically gifted aren't bullied but celebrated, envied and even invited to parties. Nathan's rational brain can cope with the most complex of maths problems just fine, the real test comes when he meets his female exchange partner, Zhang Mei, and has to cope with falling in love; the most irrational thing of all.

Written by James Graham and directed by BAFTA Award winner Morgan Matthews. Starring Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine, An Education), Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Hugo), Rafe Spall (Life of Pi, Prometheus), Jo Yang and Eddie Marsan (War Horse, Sherlock Holmes).

X+Y
Release Date: April 9th, 2015

About The Production

Beautiful Young Minds

For filmmaker Morgan Matthews, the journey that led to his debut feature film, X+Y, began when he started work on a trilogy of documentary films, all of which aired in 2007 and explored a series of very different " and somewhat unusual " competitions.

These included Hair Wars, Blue Suede Jew and Beautiful Young Minds, the latter emerging as a 90-minute feature documentary that recorded the trials and travails of a group of students heading to the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO).

All three documentaries were successful, with Beautiful Young Minds, proving a critical hit, and going on to be nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for Best Single Documentary. One of the film's subjects was a student called Daniel, who has a neurodevelopmental disorder that fosters mathematical genius.

Indeed, such was the drama and substance to Daniel's story that Morgan Mathews began contemplating a dramatic retelling of a similar tale, a fictional story inspired by the personalities and events that unfold in the documentary.

'I always felt this story had the potential to be dramatised and that this fascinating world could be represented in a feature film," he begins, 'you often find that while a documentary film is very close to the subject, you can't be there all of the time, and that there are certain aspects of these people's lives that you are simply not able to cover.

'Also, the period of time in which you are filming a documentary is often quite restricted," he adds. 'With X+Y, we have a much longer film in terms of the time period it covers. In addition, it brings this subject to a different and wider audience."

Telling a dramatic story also allows for creative licence. 'It is a real liberation, and we took a lot of creative licence with this story," Morgan Mathews says. 'X+Y is inspired by the documentary.

'Some of the characters are inspired by the documentary and perhaps recognisable but it is important to remember that the people on screen are not the same people from the documentary.

'They are our created characters who are inspired by elements of the documentary. This is not the true story of what happened."

According to X+Y producer Laura Hastings-Smith, Morgan Mathews' particular skills as a documentarian, and the insights he has revealed in his films, made him a prime candidate to become a feature director.

'Really, Beautiful Young Minds is an inspiration for X+Y and if you look at Morgan Mathews's documentaries he is always interested in people who are maybe a little on the edge, a little different," she explains.

'He is keen to understand them and to show them for their strengths as well as their weaknesses, to validate them as individuals with talent and with things to say. He gets into what makes people human."

Fellow producer David M. Thompson agrees. 'I have always thought Morgan Mathews had a really great eye and had rather an unusual take on the world," he says. 'I've been really excited by his work in documentary filmmaking.

'Over the years I have worked a lot with first-time fiction directors and I had a hunch that he would do a great job, which he really has.

'Morgan Mathews has a great warmth about him and a great instinct for a strong and emotional story," continues Thompson. 'He has a very direct way of communicating. Obviously, it is a big leap to move from documentaries to fiction, and he does it with real skill and aplomb."

Rafe Spall " who takes on the key role of mathematics teacher Mr. Humphreys in the film " points out that while Matthews is helming his first fiction feature film, he possesses bags of vital experience.

'He is a very interesting filmmaker," Rafe Spall says of Morgan Mathews, 'and although he's a first-time feature director, he is a really experienced and eminent documentary-maker.

'He's probably made more films than most feature directors so he understands the language of film and the dynamism that is required to run a floor and to tell a story in a visual manner."

In order to bring his film to life, Morgan Mathews turned first to playwright James Graham asking him to work on the screenplay.
'I wrote a treatment and decided to pair up with a writer. I knew James Graham, who was doing really interesting things in theatre and specifically in fringe theatre at the time," Morgan Mathews says. James Graham has since staged This House at the National Theatre.

Though Morgan Mathews knew the world he showed on screen in Beautiful Young Minds, James Graham did not. This prompted Graham to join the UK team leader from Beautiful Young Minds on a visit to an IMO in Hamburg.

'That was obviously a different team from the guys I talked with for my documentary, but James Graham got a real sense of that world too. We both ended up with a very strong grounding in the reality of that world and felt that we understood that world very well. We were then able to run with it from our creative perspective."

Characters + Casting

The character at the centre of X+Y is a young boy, Nathan. His parents understand that he is different from other boys of his age and that he has difficulty understanding and expressing his emotions. He is keenly intelligent and displays a supreme talent for mathematics.

'He is a boy who is fascinated by the world around him," says Morgan Mathews of his main character, 'he loves patterns, colour and light. He is diagnosed as having a form of aphasia which is quite specific to him and is related to changes in pattern and light."

As a consequence, Nathan is 'quite mesmerised by the world around him," Morgan Mathews explains, 'but he doesn't really engage very well with the emotional world, he is also diagnosed as being on the spectrum [of autism]."

To bring this complex and engaging character to life, the filmmakers turned to young English actor Asa Butterfield. 'I had seen Asa Butterfield in Hugo and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas," says Morgan Mathews, 'and I think he is a wonderful young actor. He does brilliantly in what is quite a difficult role."

One of the main difficulties that Morgan Mathews and Asa Butterfield had to overcome was whereabouts to place Nathan on the spectrum; neurodevelopmental disorders " including both autism and Asperger's " can vary greatly from one person to another.

'There is not just one way to play something like this, but Morgan Mathews knew a lot about the emotional reaction that he wanted people to get from each of the characters," Asa Butterfield says.

'He knew where he wanted things to be in terms of Nathan's condition and it was just a case of finding that on screen and bringing it to life."

In a bid to bring as much authenticity to the role as possible, Asa Butterfield watched Beautiful Young Minds a number of times. 'That was really helpful because it showed different people coping with different levels and different intensities of neurodevelopmental disorders. Morgan Mathews and I then had to decide where we'd want to place Nathan on the spectrum."

The actor also visited a number of different schools that specialised in treating people with different mental disorders. 'I talked to people who had autism and Asperger's and talked to them about what they found difficult when they were teenagers," he says.

'We talked about the hardships they went through, mentally and physically. It was a really interesting learning experience."

Asa Butterfield found the character very rewarding. 'Every actor wants to find a role that will push them," he says, 'and which is very different from anything that they've done before. This was all of that and much more.

'The character was unlike anyone I have played before," he adds, 'and it required me to understand things on a totally different level and to really get under the skin of the character to find out what made him tick. There were times when it was hard work but it was all worth it."
Nathan struggles to interact successfully with other people, although he enjoys a close relationship with his father " the one person with whom he can readily communicate. His dad understands him. 'There is a very strong bond between them," says Asa Butterfield.

'When Nathan was younger, his dad was really the only person who could communicate with him. He understood what Nathan enjoyed, what would make him excited and what would make him want to communicate with people."

A tragic accident then robs the boy of his father. 'When he loses his dad that is a massive blow, not only because he lost the only person he could talk to but also because he is now in his mum's hands," Asa Butterfield explains.

'His mother loves him very much but cannot communicate and interact with Nathan in the same way as his father did."

Nathan's mum, Julie, is a prominent character in the film. Oscarnominated actress Sally Hawkins takes on the role. 'She is an incredible actress," says Morgan Mathews of Sally Hawkins. 'To see what she put into the performance in terms of the depth of emotion was fantastic.

'Sally Hawkins brings this soulfulness and a great sense of humour as well. It is her emotional intensity and range, however, that is really quite extraordinary."

According to Sally Hawkins, Nathan's relationship with his mother is far from easy. 'Their relationship is a strained and difficult, or it is for Julie," she says. 'She loves him deeply and yet Nathan can't give back emotionally as she needs.

'Julie is kind and sensitive and tends to feel things very deeply," she adds. 'She loves Nathan very much but struggles with not being able to show that love in a conventional way. She knows that he is not -normal' and she is intimidated by the condition in a way that holds them apart. 'When we first meet Julie she is just learning to understand what Nathan's condition is, and what that means for the rest of his life."

The loss of Nathan's father, therefore, is a massive blow. 'Julie and Nathan's lives are completely turned upside down," says Sally Hawkins. 'They have both lost the one person who made everything okay. Everything changes at that point.

'His father was the key for Nathan," the actress adds. 'He understood him. Their relationship was easy compared to Julie's relationship with Nathan. She is left without any clues about how to even talk to her son. She struggles with this, and suffers from depression in the aftermath [of her husband's death]."

An important figure then emerges in Julie and Nathan's lives, Mr. Humphreys, a mathematics teacher at Nathan's school. 'The Humphreys character is quite brilliant," says the producer, Hastings-Smith. 'He is your classic damaged soul, and darkly wistful with it."

Rafe Spall brings Humphreys to life on screen. 'Rafe Spall brought so much to Humphreys," Morgan Mathews notes. 'He has a great talent of being able to bring humour and warmth to a scene and a lot of that comes naturally from him.

'He is a very funny guy as well. But he also takes his acting very seriously, and he does some great improv."

Morgan Mathews encouraged his cast to deviate from the script at certain points, 'and if there was then something in that take, then we would do another take and keep that as part of the scene. Rafe was a master at doing this in a way that generated humour."

It is through Nathan's interaction with Mr. Humphreys that he is exposed to the fresh and exciting world of competitive mathematics. When he was growing up, Mr. Humphreys had been an extremely promising mathematician who had enjoyed success at the IMO.

'But where we find him in the film, his life has not gone to plan," says Rafe Spall of his character. 'He had huge promise as a mathematician but when we find him he is a lonely bloke who has now got multiple sclerosis, which is a mysterious disease, and he has not achieved all that he should have done in his maths career."

As a result of both his career trajectory and his illness, the teacher selfmedicates, 'with marijuana and loads of booze," says Rafe Spall, 'and he is getting more and more ill. His relationship with Nathan, however, reignites his love for maths and gives him something to live for."

'Playing a character with multiple sclerosis was difficult", says Rafe Spall, who researched the disease in great detail. 'The MS Society where I live were very nice to me and I went to some of their discussion groups," he adds. 'I also did a lot of research on it and spoke to a lot of doctors about it, and I watched a number of documentaries, including a really good one called Here's Johnny about a comic book artist who had MS and I based a lot of it on him.

'When you have MS or a debilitating disease, it is going to affect your personality. In that way I think the condition is a big part of who the character is."

According to Asa Butterfield, Mr. Humphreys is a 'brilliant character". He explains, 'Nathan's teacher is one of the few people he can interact with, because Nathan interacts through maths and puzzles and patterns. He really appreciates people who are good at maths and the two of them develop a really lovely relationship."

Mr. Humphreys also develops a relationship with Nathan's mum. 'After all that she has been through, Julie learns that it is okay to feel good again," says Sally Hawkins, 'and that it is okay to want to feel attractive again; that it is okay to laugh again.

'She learns that there is no reason to be afraid and she takes that leap of faith in the end, not only for Nathan but for herself as well."

Rafe Spall adds, 'Julie is extremely grateful to Mr. Humphreys because she is trapped in a world where she looks after her son and that is allconsuming. 'People are always defined by how they deal with adverse situations and when you get two people dealing with difficult things it can make for a lovely relationship."

According to producer David Thompson, the two adult characters discover new emotional depths. 'The film is about the quest for love, in a way, and about the search and understanding of how love works," he says, 'and that's true of the older couple, as well as for Nathan."

The other prominent relationships in Nathan's life emerge when he joins the British mathematics team for the IMO training camp, to be held in Taiwan. Richard, for example, becomes an important focus - the UK team leader, played by Eddie Marsan.

'Richard is very in control of all the students at the maths camp and he pushes them to the limits," says Asa Butterfield. 'He wants to get the best out of Nathan.

'He really wants to push him because he sees a lot of potential. Nathan, though, is resistant to it because he is used to very passive conversing, so it is a big change for him."

Morgan Mathews concurs. 'Richard takes it all a bit too seriously, perhaps," he says with a smile. 'He pushes it a bit too much. And Eddie Marsan filled those shoes so well.

'When Eddie turned up and launched into this performance, I was so pleased that we'd made the decision to go with him," adds the director. 'On his first day, Eddie delivered a master-class in acting. He had quite a long speech to do on the coach when the team are on the way to the airport to fly out to Taipei. It is quite a long piece of dialogue in front of the team and he just got on the coach and nailed it in a way that was so impressive. I think that inspired us."

In many ways, Richard is an inspiring character, Morgan Mathews continues. 'He has this strange mix of being both inspiring and of being a little bit on the scary side. As an actor, Eddie got that down perfectly; he is really extraordinary. I can't believe the quality of our cast. It really is special."

The most important character that Nathan meets on his journey, however, is the beautiful Zhang Mei (played by Jo Yang), a member of the Chinese mathematics team heading to the IMO.

'Nathan meets Zhang Mei at the IMO training camp in Taipei," Morgan Mathews says. 'She is the catalyst to his emotional maturation.

'He automatically respects her. In some ways he is in awe of her because she is so good at maths, probably better than him, and he is instantly attracted to her."

Zhang Mei encourages Nathan to explore his feelings and to open up. 'And through her he begins to unlock some of the feelings that have been repressed since his father died," says Morgan Mathews.

Other than his mother, Zhang Mei is the first female with whom Nathan builds a relationship, 'and he is not sure what it is that he has with her," Asa Butterfield says.

'He really struggles with any sort of social interaction and to be paired up with this girl who doesn't speak the best English is a huge shock to him; he doesn't know quite how to handle it.

'As their relationship develops," continues Asa Butterfield, 'they become better friends and he starts to have stronger feelings towards her. He is really confused by that and a bit scared."

Ultimately, this is a journey about a boy learning to love, notes Morgan Mathews. 'He has to come to terms with it, not just falling in love with Zhang Mei but learning to have an emotional relationship with his mother, and coming to terms with the loss of his father whom he loved so deeply."

When casting a character as integral to Nathan's story as Zhang Mei, the filmmakers were keen to recruit an actress from China, rather than someone who had lived exclusively in the West.

'I was quite keen to have someone who was actually Chinese as opposed to British–Chinese," Morgan Mathews says, 'and we cast the net over to China and involved a Chinese casting director in Beijing.

'I wanted someone who could speak Mandarin and it had to feel believable. I didn't want someone who was putting it on. We were besieged by loads of self-taped auditions, but when Jo Yang appeared she really stood out. We flew her over and got her in a room with Asa and their chemistry felt very natural."

The actress' cultural experience of China was also a real boon. 'When we were rehearsing," the director recalls, 'there was quite a bit she told me about the experience of being a young person growing up in China, and that informed the script and the performance."

Hastings-Smith agrees. 'She is wonderful," says the producer. 'And one of the things that was most useful for us was that she was very much a young, modern girl living in Beijing. That was very important because she brought an authenticity to the character."

Look + Location

According to the X+Y producers, authenticity was an important watchword for their director and their film. 'I would say that authenticity was always a huge word for Morgan Mathews," says Laura Hastings-Smith.

'Coming from documentary he wanted this film to feel very natural and authentic and those watchwords went right across all departments: production design, costume, hair, make up, as well how to film it and how to light it.

'A lot of his work has seen him recording sound and recording picture out there in the world with his characters," she adds, 'and he wanted to film this in a very responsive way, and an intuitive way, at speed. Hopefully that naturalness and authenticity will come through."

Fellow producer David Thompson, meanwhile, says that Morgan Mathews' shooting style proved liberating for the actors. 'He has a natural flair for fiction, quite clearly, but he also works in an unusual, unconventional way, which is refreshing," David Thompson says.

'He doesn't approach making drama like other directors, because he comes from a documentary background, so he is good at slinging out some of the rules, as it were, and working in a freer way, which was great for the actors.

'Also, his style of shooting was much more in the style of a documentary, free-flowing and giving the actors more space and in some cases the room to improvise," continues Thompson. 'There was more a feeling of being like a documentary in some ways. It was not so hidebound by the rules of big-scale filmmaking, but more free-flowing on the set."

Morgan Mathews worked alongside acclaimed cinematographer Danny Cohen, who earned an Oscar nomination in 2011 for The King's Speech. 'He has done amazing work on Les Misérables and The King's Speech," says Matthews, 'but I was really keen on Danny having seen a lot of his earlier work with Shane Meadows.

Danny Cohen worked with Meadows on projects like Dead Man's Shoes and also the series This Is England 86 and 88, 'which I thought were brilliant," says the director. 'There is a realism to Danny Cohen's work, a quality which combines that realism with an aesthetic beauty."

The director notes that he wanted his crew to be 'light on their feet", allowing them to shoot quickly, and he knew that Danny Cohen would have no problem working in such a manner.

'We were quite ambitious in what we wanted to shoot especially with how much time we had to shoot it in," Morgan Mathews explains, 'so I did not want much around us in terms of paraphernalia.

'I wanted to be able to move around quite freely and I wanted somebody who was comfortable with that, but I also wanted a film that was quite beautiful. That's why Danny Cohen was so important."

This is a film about beauty, says Morgan Mathews, 'about a boy who sees beauty in the world around him that other people don't see, and it's also about the beauty of relationships. So I wanted the film to reflect that as well."

Much of X+Y was shot on location in Sheffield and in the university grounds at Cambridge. Nathan's home life unfolds in the Yorkshire city.

'Sheffield is a fantastic place to shoot in with quite a wide range of locations so I think the city will look great," says Laura Hastings-Smith. 'And then coming to Cambridge is everything for Nathan - the goal of his life up until this point - to be part of the beautiful world of maths, epitomized by the IMO at Trinity College.

'It is there in all its glory, a wonderful thing, and you have these tremendous contrasts between Sheffield and Cambridge and, of course, Taipei."

Shooting in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, was a mesmerizing experience for the filmmakers. 'That was the first time I'd been to Taiwan or indeed anywhere in that part of the world and we had a lot fun there," says Asa Butterfield.

'Filming there was brilliant because life on the streets was just so amazing. Once you've finished shooting you could explore this amazing city, with really cool temples, and interesting people and food."

The primary location in Taipei was a schoolhouse, which, says Laura Hastings- Smith, was like another world in itself. 'And the street life of the city is fabulous. It is a very, very different society and putting our characters in that world changes them and hopefully you can see it on the screen. You feel a totally different way of being."

For Morgan Mathews, shooting in Taipei was logistically challenging but also very liberating. 'There is some red tape to deal with," he says, 'but seeing a different culture and environment, and being able to capture that, was wonderful."

The fast paced city life in Taipei complemented the manner in which Matthews wanted to shoot his film. 'Because we were often shooting on the streets, that really suited me; we could work with either hand-held or Steadicam.

'We were running around night markets and parks, on the streets, without any kinds of restrictions. The people in shot are not extras; they are just the people walking past."

Passers-by largely ignored the crew, he notes. 'Taipei is a great place to shoot because people don't seem to look at you that much," continues Morgan Mathews. 'They don't seem that bothered that you are running past with a film crew, so all of those scenes, whether in a park or a night market, they are not constructed.

'They are shot with real people walking around and, hopefully, that gives our film a realistic quality that is still very beautiful. The whole project has been a wonderful experience."

The producers agree. 'It is really quite an emotional story " someone described it recently as Billy Elliot with sums " but it is also a great celebration of the power of maths," says Thompson. 'It deals with the emotional power of maths itself and unashamedly celebrates that.

'It is unusual in its themes as well," he adds, 'and it is quite difficult to pigeonhole; it is a coming-of-age story in some ways, with these two young people who find love, but it is also very much about the adults.

'It is about different people at different stages of their lives, discovering emotional truths that they hadn't recognised before; people being hauled through experiences which leave them very changed when they come up the other side. I hope people agree that it is really a wonderful film."

X+Y
Release Date: April 9th, 2015