Starring Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah. Written by Gina Prince-Bythewood from the novel by Sue Monk Kidd. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. (14A) 110 min. Opens Oct 17.
A thoroughly well-intentioned adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel about a troubled white girl’s experiences in a black household in the American South in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees is another example of why stories that might be perfect for Oprah’s Book Club end up less satisfying as movies. (To be fair, the talk-show host did not give the nod to Kidd’s bestseller but she’s been stumping hard for the film, whose producers include Will and Jada Pinkett Smith.)
Though touching at times, the movie slides too often from the graceful to the soporific as it meanders between a sparsely arranged series of dramatic incidents and awkward bits of symbolism that rang more poetic on the page.
Dakota Fanning plays Lily, a 14-year-old in South Carolina who flees her cruel father (Paul Bettany) and goes looking for traces of the long-dead mother she never knew. In a nearby town, she discovers a series of supplementary maternal figures, most prominently August (Queen Latifah), a wisdom-dispensing honey-maker who lives in a pink house with her sisters June (Alicia Keys) and May (Sophie Okonedo). The recent signing of LBJ’s Civil Rights Act provides a larger backdrop for Lily’s story of healing and forgiveness.
Gina Prince-Bythewood — who made one of 2000’s better American indie pics with Love & Basketball — aims for tasteful restraint, but given all the jars of sweet stuff on display, it’s no surprise that many scenes get sticky with sentiment. However, the scarcity of movies about the experience of black women in the South gives this particular tale of empowerment some resonance despite its flaws and its literally Lily-white protagonist.