Videogames are a lot like real life. They have characters that try to complete goals in various settings; they take effort to get through; they’re interactive.

The only difference is that videogames usually make sense.

This is the starting point for Ben X, a drama by Belgian filmmaker Nic Balthazar. The main character, a high school student named Ben (Greg Timmermans), is autistic. He’s extremely intelligent, but he simply can’t relate to other human beings — he’s socially awkward to a fault. For this reason, he’s assaulted mercilessly by the other students in his school; for the same reason, he disappears into an online videogame for hours and hours every day.

Ben opens the ol' equip menu to get ready for school

It’s a common story, of course — while people are emotional and erratic, computers are completely logical and predictable (in fact, I remember hearing a psychologist on NPR recently who wondered aloud what autistic people did with their time before computers were invented). And the story of a high school student overcoming rejection is an even more common one, of course. What’s remarkable about Ben X, though, is simply how well Balthazar tells his story.

Fundamentally, this is a audiovisual exercise — Ben X’s blue palette and techno soundtrack convey Ben’s isolation and depression sympathetically; Balthazar also frequently employs the trick of editing in footage from ArchLord, the MMORPG Ben loves, in order to show the lens through which Ben views everyday life. The storyline is a fairly typical outsider melodrama, but the way it’s done on screen makes it a pleasure to watch.

So it’s probably nothing new, but it’s done differently enough to warrant a look — plus it incorporates enough comical twists to avoid the usual wrist-cutting territory that melodramas like this usually descend into. Fundamentally, this is really a story about something we all need — love — and the lengths we go to in order to get it (whether it’s real or imaginary). In that respect, Ben X is a successful experiment — a sweet little concoction that makes you think almost as much as it makes you feel.