Annabel Jankel (director)
(studio)
15 (certificate)
105 (length)
19 July 2019 (released)
20 July 2019
Tell it to the Bees is based on the bestseller by Fiona Shaw and is set in the 1950’s in a small town in Scotland; the ‘close knit community’ type. Dr Jean Markham (Anna Paquin) is returning back to her home village after many years to take of over as the community doctor, following the passing of her father.
Parallel to this is Lydia (Holliday Grainger) estranged from her husband and bringing up her son Charlie (Gregor Selkirk) on her own. She’s not exactly a social outcast but being single and not a local, things are difficult. Adding to that her horrendous job in the mills (the sound of which in the film is incredible) she takes home a paltry sum that just about pays her lodgings, with help from her ex.
The two women meet through an accident that Charlie has, and there is something of a connection. Charlie is also drawn to the bees that Jean keeps, and here too there’s connection as she encourages him to talk to them, to be open with them, man. What’s going on at the house becomes the talk of the village, as the women’s’ feeling for each other develop, they become more open. This in turns confuses Charlie who then goes off to tell his father, what he’s seen.
Charlie’s dad Robert (Emun Elliott), a traumatised war veteran, who up until then really had no interest in his son’s upbringing decides he ought to. And he gets very angry, I mean really angry in the knuckle dragging manner that scores of angry film dads before him have got angry.
None of this is very original and it soon descends into cliché with dad getting very angry and violent, the family having rejected the wife and the doctor then having to call on them to save a situation.
Where it falls down is in the characters: they aren’t that interesting. The situation they are in does demand questions, it just they aren’t the ones to ask them. Workaday performances from Paquin and Grainger don’t generate much empathy. There’s not a great deal of chemistry between even during a scene that practically lifts that Kelly McGillis/Harrison Ford one from Witness.
Having said all that director Annabel Jankel does conjure up a solid sense of time and place, the cold austere locations and the sound design underscore the dread grimness of the town and the inhabitants.
