Critic Reviews

It’s hard to dislike this pleasant, earnest work.

Tell It To The Bees can seem a little too respectable for its own good but there are moments of pain and heartbreak that rise to the surface, especially in a tense climax that puts the fates of several characters in the balance.

What Tell It To The Bees accomplishes for queer romance it abandons with an ending that is committed to unnecessary melancholy.

But the handsomely-mounted period production has its rewards and the finale manages a nice messiness that undoes some of what’s trite and far-fetched that’s come before it.

Paquin, in one of her strongest performances since The Piano, and especially Grainger (best known for a substantial résumé of British television) shoulder the film’s dramatic burdens with grace and ease. They’re a pleasure to watch. But the unassumingly square and overly familiar film simply isn’t the buzzworthy vehicle their work deserves.

‘Tell It to the Bees’ is a poignant story of a romance that’s crushed before it can take wing, even if it lacks the messiness of Fiona Shaw’s source novel.

Grainger (soon to be seen in Sophie Hyde’s brilliant, jagged Animals) is a magnetic and sensual foil to the frowning, reliably expressive Paquin. The flirty tension between the two feels quietly credible, the camera occasionally shuddering with desire. A pity, then, that this sweetness is lost as the film makes a tonal swerve in its final third.

Then there’s a third act that’s so wildly out of left field, it shifts the tone completely. It’s an almost comical departure, but it’s certainly a disappointing one.

Unfortunately, while director AJ Jankel (Super Mario Bros – yes, she’s the one responsible for that) captures aspects of the hostility toward lesbian relationships in that earlier era, she does it without nuance. Her framing of characters is black-and-white and the far-too-pat ending offers an unearned resolution.

It falls flat. There are a variety of reasons — one-note characters, an overly-familiar story arc, a laughable sequence of bee heroism (!). (Alternate title idea: “Secrets and Hives.”) Still, there is the work of Grainger and Paquin.... They make Tell It to the Bees watchable, and are worthy of high praise.