Tell it to the Bees

Tell it to the Bees is about a small town in Scotland during the 1950’s. Scandalously, the new doctor in town is a lady named Jean. Young mother Lydia and her son Robert bond with Jean. Lydia and Jean’s friendship slowly turns to romance. Because of the time period and rural setting, this potentially sweet romance is interfered with by various forms of homophobia.

Looking at the promotional materials, I thought this would be a fairly feel-good romance. I expected the characters to experience some degree of oppression, sure. But I was unprepared for the amount of unhappy things that occur in this movie. Tell it to the Bees features gang rape, botched abortions and dead children. It’s a lot bleaker than I expected. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but there is a disconnect between these elements and the very sweet romance portion of the movie. And it doesn’t work as some sort of juxtaposition of it being a cruel world and Jean and Lydia’s romance being the one good thing. It just makes the movie feel uneven and like it can’t decide how lighthearted or dark it wants to go.

Visually, the period piece element of Tell it to the Bees works well. This rural small town really comes to life. The costumes are great, the set design is great, I am transported to the setting in question. The problem is that this setting is populated with rather bland characters. And I can’t figure out how that happened. As mentioned, there’s a lot higher stakes of drama going on in this film than I expected. However, none of these characters came alive. Somehow, they end up as the most two-dimensional thing about this world.

I think Tell it to the Bees’ main problem is that they tried to take a small, personal story and give it historical grandiosity. Having this love story be some sort of a case study for how it was to be a homosexual couple during the time period is perhaps why the movie feels bland. I think the movie should have been unconcerned about the future of queer rights or what Lydia and Jean represented. Instead the movie should’ve focused on them as characters and as a couple. They should have let their small, character-driven love story be the focus and allowed its audience to extrapolate outwards. Instead, Lydia and Jean’s experiences become generic because there’s an attempt to have them represent all homosexuals of the time period.

The best part of the movie is the bees. Obviously. The scenes with the bees are the ones I got the most enjoyment from. Lydia and Jean’s first major moment of sexual tension where Jean delicately blows bees off Lydia’s neck? Lovely. Robert seeing two people have sex and running home to ask the bees about what it is he just witness? Hilarious. A swarm of bees interrupting a rape in the third act? Iconic. The bees absolutely steal the show as well they should.

I really wanted to and expected to like Tell it to the Bees. However, it was neither completely enjoyable nor interesting. The moments where they do focus on the love story between Lydia and Jean are really sweet and I loved those bits of the movie. However, most of the film is a bleak exploration of why being queer in a small town in the 50’s would suck. As if all of us couldn’t have guessed that already. Also, there could’ve been more of a focus on the best and most interesting characters, the bees.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

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