Sweetly Satisfying Bees a Honey of Tale
Lily (Dakota Fanning) is a 14-year-old girl living with her father T. Ray Owens (Paul Bettany) on his South Carolina peach farm. It is 1964 and the girl’s caretaker Rosaleen Daise (Jennifer Hudson) is excited about the recent passage of the Civil Rights Act giving her newfound freedoms she’d never even dreamt of. Both girl’s are profoundly happy over this state of affairs, each of them feeling this just might be the glorious sign they’d been waiting for signaling their lives are going to be changing for the better.
Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah in Fox Searchlight's The Secret Life of Bees
But after a rough encounter with racist bigots leaves Rosaleen in the hospital and T. Ray furious, Lily rescues her friend from police custody leading the two of them away from home and to a place she’s known only in her most heartfelt dreams. See, she’s harboring her own secret pains, desperately trying to relive the past and figure out exactly what it was that led to the tragic death of her mother Deborah (Hilarie Burton) when she was barely out of diapers.
The two end up at the home of the Boatwright clan, three sisters – August (Queen Latifah), June (Alicia Keys) and May (Sophie Okonedo) – who make their living jarring the region’s best honey. This serenely emotional world is just perfect for the two runaways, both of them learning more about themselves, and about life, then they’d ever thought possible. But the world isn’t done with Lily and Rosaleen, and if they’re not careful they could end up bringing misfortune and chaos, not only upon themselves, but on the Boatwrights, too.
Based on the best-selling novel by Sue Monk Kidd, writer and director Gina Prince-Bythewood brings The Secret Life of Bees to the big screen infusing it with both warmth and intelligence. Superbly acted, nicely plotted and exquisitely shot by Rogier Stoffers (Lakeview Terrace), this is beautifully layered piece of period entertainment that seldom preaches and never overstays its welcome, the whole thing building to a refreshingly simple coda of tenderness that nearly broke my heart.
And yet, a large piece of me refuses to let myself totally fall in love. Prince-Bythewood cannot escape cliché completely, a couple of pivotal scenes between Lily and August coming perilously close to drowning in syrupy sentimentally. It doesn’t help that the normally reliable Mark Isham (The Express) doesn’t score things remotely well, his music hammering home plot points with a didactic suddenness the majority of the movie eschews.
Thankfully none of these flaws have any sort of lingering effect. The trio of singers-turned-actresses Latifah, Hudson and Keys are downright wonderful, while both Fanning and Bettany showcase a world-weary disharmony that speaks volumes without ever having to utter a single word. Best of all is Okonedo, the actor taking what could have been a standard stock mentally handicapped character and turning her into someone emotionally complex and vividly alive. She’s the film’s heart, soul and driving force, and as good as everyone is she is the one impossible to take your eyes away from.
The director shades everything with a sensitive yet firm glow hinting at the mystical but never pushes these feelings to a point where they could potentially annoy. How she hasn’t made another motion picture since 2000’s criminally underrated Love & Basketball is way beyond me, and while this one’s not quite the marvelous wonderment that one was it’s still so darn good I admit to being suitably impressed.
I can’t say The Secret Life of Bees covers any new ground or offers up opinions or sentiments about this era in history we haven’t seen umpteen times before, but it does tell a highly nuanced tale of friendship and family as well as any similar productions released this year. The movie never bored me and, even better, it didn’t beat me over the head with its views, and by the time it was over Prince-Bythewood had won me over as sweetly and as smoothly as fresh honey drizzled on a fresh baked biscuit.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- The Secret Life of Bees Theatrical Trailer
