A tale of forgiveness, sisterly solidarity, and a child's need for love, "The Secret Life of Bees" is set in the South.
Boy, is it ever.
Sidney Baldwin/Fox Searchlight
In "The Secret Life of Bees," Queen Latifah stars as a wise beekeeper who takes in a troubled teenager, played by Dakota Fanning.
This is a film in which a resentful widower punishes his 14-year-old daughter by making her kneel on a pile of hard, uncooked grits, poured right from the box.
When the family's housekeeper shows up for work and gets a gander at the girl's scarred, bloody knees, she asks, knowingly: "How long your dad keep you on those grits?"
Apparently, in this household, the phrase "Don't make me cut a switch!" has been replaced with "Don't make me get the grits!"
"The Secret Life of Bees" has opened in the wake of "Hounddog," an indigestible Southern gumbo with Elvis additives that arrived at Malco's Ridgeway Four on Sept. 19 and fled six days later. In that film, talented young Dakota Fanning played an assault victim with a lightnin'-struck daddy. This time, the older and more willowy Fanning is Lily Owens, a girl haunted by a barely remembered childhood tragedy. Fanning was superb in "Hounddog," and she's excellent in "Bees," a far superior work that will be embraced by moviegoers who find solace in its redemptive themes.
Adapted from the best-seller by Sue Monk Kidd, the film takes place in the mid-1960s. An early scene finds Lily and the housekeeper, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), watching Lyndon Johnson discuss the passage of the Voting Rights Act on television; when Rosaleen follows up by trying to register to vote, the local racists beat her up. As a result, she's not just hospitalized but arrested.
Like a sort of politically motivated Huck and Jim, Lily and Rosaleen flee. Concealing their fugitive status, they find refuge in a "Pepto-Bismol"-colored country home, where they discover sweet-potato biscuits; an old ship's figurehead brandishing what years later would be identified as a Black Power fist; and a trio of eccentric sisters named for months of the spring and summer.
May (Sophie Okonedo) is weepy and somewhat infantile; June (Alicia Keys), a cellist, is glamorous but emotionally withholding; and August (Queen Latifah) is the wise and loving All-Mother -- the queen bee of this idyllic hive. When Lily allows that she's never met such "cultured" Negro women before, Rosaleen chides her, but then has to agree.
August financially supports this precarious utopia by manufacturing Black Madonna Honey, named for the figurehead, which -- fist salute aside -- resembles an African Virgin Mary. August dispenses honeyed words along with apian nectar: "The world's really just one big beeyard," she tells Lily. The rules are the same, she says: "Don't be afraid... Above all, send the bees love."
Directed and scripted by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who has labored in television since making a small splash with her debut feature, "Love & Basketball," in 2000, "The Secret Life of Bees" resembles a shiny made-for-TV production, in appearance and themes. It's a film that offers historical and object lessons about racism and feminism along with more generalized homilies about the importance of "lifting someone's heart." Some will find the honey served here too thick and cloying, but others will declare that it's just right (thanks in no small part to the efforts of the charming cast).
The film may find its most appreciative viewers among teenagers, who will be alternately shocked (by the injustices of the past) and inspired (by the efforts of those who resisted such injustices). Adults, meanwhile, may be grateful for a film they can take kids to that will stimulate discussion about not just social justice issues but about the devices used by artists to tell stories. Even young viewers will be able to grasp the symbolic connections between the story's bee hives and its human communities.
-- John Beifuss, 529-2394
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