amiscoe

The scenery was beautiful, the story interesting, the acting good. But like with Winter's Bone, I just wasn't totally buying it. It was hard to know how old the girl, Tom, is. 12, 13, 14? At first she talks like a nine or ten year old, but we can see she is older than that. She's not menstruating? So let's say she is 12. She's an "old soul" as the social worker said of her. But she is still a kid. I'm just not sure about these movies that are completely reliant on self possessed, motherless girls. I had the same reaction to the book, Secret Life of Bees. And bees are featured in this movie as some kind of metaphor for life. The story was way too idealized. Motherless girls are not self possessed. They grow up in many was dissociated from their own feelings. The film was beautifully made. I just wish the story had more realism to the inner life of the girl. We don't do our girls a favor when we don't tell the truth of female experience.