The Secret Life of Bees

USA. 2008. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. Screenplay adapted by Gina Prince-Bythewood. Based on the novel written by Sue Monk Kidd. Starring: Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Paul Bettany, Tristan Wilds, Nate Parker, Shondrella Avery and Renee Clark.

Rating: ***

There is little doubt that Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees aims straight for the heart and not for strict realism. The rural Deep South of 1964, the year when the Civil Rights Act had been passed, could have never been this hopeful and this optimistic. But as a kind of escapist fantasy depiction of a symbolic refuge from the harsh feelings of racism and familial abandonment at the historical time, the story succeeds earnestly and movingly.

The key place of refuge is the home of August Boatwright (Queen Latifah), who runs a big bee honey business with her two younger siblings, May (Sophie Okonedo) and June (Alicia Keys). Look at the casting and we gather a sense of how much conviction they can bring to what could be just maudlin material (including Keys, who may not have acted much but whom I think always had an actress in her by the forcefulness she brings to her songs). All three strike such different emotional nuances from August’s level-headed yet lightly humorous presence to June’s stern rigidity and self-protectiveness and May’s fragile personality that you do not want to perturb with any kind of tragic news.

Into this place arrives a 14-year old girl named Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning). She has been living with her abusive and unloving father, T. Ray (a nearly unrecognizable Paul Bettany) and her housekeeper, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson). When Rosaleen is wrongly arrested after she stands up to some racist men who frown on and then later beat her on her way to register to vote, Lily decides to flee from home and help Rosaleen escape out of the hospital. Along the way, Lily sees a label of a honey jar that has a picture identical to the one she found in a time capsule belonging to her long passed mother whom she always wanted to know more about. Following this label, they find their way to the Boatwrights.

The Boatwright sisters are initially reluctant, particularly June who perhaps senses that the girl will bring too much of her baggage into their place. They decide to take the two in, however, as Rosaleen works with May in the kitchen while August brings Lily out to filter out the honey from the bee hives. Meanwhile, June continues practicing the cello while dealing with her own relationship issues revolving around her hesitation to finally tie the knot with her long-time boyfriend, Neil (Nate Parker).

There are some emotional developments that I have danced around and a few of the more melodramatic moments and sometimes subsequent reconciliations are a little obvious and not quite evenly spaced out. But the movie (which I heard made very few changes to the original source novel that I have not read) is unconventional in how, rather than building everything to one climax, it contains two emotional plateaus in the middle section of the film to reflect the devastating emotional toll of the wounding historical times and it would be unfair to give a hint of what they are. And in the main central current is the story of a girl who seeks love and shelter after surviving 14 years of being deprived of it (and fair warning, there are a couple of scenes of domestic violence) and finds it for a time in the comfort of these surrogate mothers.

Playing that girl who stands as kind of a companion role to her previous controversial film also set in the Deep South, Hounddog (which I have not yet seen), Dakota Fanning really shows a maturation of depth as an actress. Despite her strengths as an actress, she may have been blamed for acting above her age too often in earlier films but not with this film. She, of course, still has the usual fierce mettle and sometimes fiery candor she has shown well in the past. But by playing closer to her age or maybe now that the years have fully caught up to her talents, she in turn is really allowed to show a greater sense of vulnerability through, strangely enough (or perhaps not), more youthfulness.

Writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood and her casting directors, Aisha Coley and Lisa Mae Fincannon have cast the film very well as aforementioned and really it is the deep, resonating performances that carry the film through its more episodic and rough patches. No two actresses from Fanning’s Lily to Hudson, Latifah, Okonedo and Keys strike the same note and every one richly and precisely defines her role. Hudson finally has her first decent film role since her Oscar® win for Dreamgirls while those who have seen British actress, Okonedo in Hotel Rwanda will not be surprised seeing her slip so easily into this complex Southern role. Keys, on the other hand, has the fewest words of dialogue in the film but shows she has real presence to suggest her fiercer nature as a cellist and a civil rights activist as well as other deeper things that she would choose to leave unsaid. And then there is Queen Latifah, who, as usual and true to her name, is never less than authoritative and commanding.

The movie is not an all-around great film and besides a few problems with the pacing, some of the dialogue is a little too on-the-nose. But some movies just lift themselves above the ordinary on the sheer emotional strengths of their characters and performances. We believe in them and thus we believe in the hopeful historical fantasy they inhabit. And as a historical fantasy, The Secret Life of Bees is a small jewel.