Genres:Drama
Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother...
Director:Gina Prince-Bythewood
Writers: Gina Prince-Bythewood (screenplay), Sue Monk Kidd (novel)
Stars: Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson and Queen Latifah
Storyline
set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and only friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by the intelligent and independent Boatwright sisters, Lily finds solace in their mesmerizing world of beekeeping.
Plot Synopsis
The movie opens in 1964, during the civil rights movement. Lily is almost fourteen years old and has an abusive father and no mother. In the first scene, a woman in a dress wanders around a room and goes back and forth in a closet. A marble rolls on the ground and a little girl is playing with a young clear glass shooter marble and a mirror. The mother (Deborah Owens played by Hilarie Burton) is taking clothes from the closet and putting them into a suitcase. Suddenly a man barges in, the husband/father starts to rage at the mother, saying that she isnt going to leave him. He throws the suitcase on the ground and grabs her roughly. The woman reaches for a gun in the closet and points it at the man, telling him that she just wants to go. The man wrestles the gun out of her hand and it falls on the ground. The childs hand goes to pick up the gun. The gun goes off and the scene fades to an older Lily lying in bed, her eyes open.
"I killed my mother when I was four years old, thats when I knew about myself. She was all I wanted and I took her away. Nothing else much matters," says Lily's voiceover.
In the middle of the night, Lily Owens sees hundreds of bees in her room and runs to tell her father. Her father T.Ray (Paul Bettany) in return yells at her to go back to bed. Frustrated, Lily runs into their peach-tree orchard and digs up a box she buried there. The box contains her mother's gloves, a small photograph of her mother, and a scrap of wood with a picture of Virgin Mary on it. Lily puts on her mother's gloves, partially unbuttons her blouse and holds the photograph close to her stomach. While Lily lays on the soft dirt, staring at the stars, she hears her father calling her. Hurriedly, Lily takes off the gloves and slips the items back into the box and starts to bury it. While she is rebuttoning her blouse, her father approaches her, and yells for "whoever was out there with her". Lily's father grabs her arm and runs her into the house. Then, he shouts, "You tryin' to get yourself pregnant?!" Lily's father pours a box of grits onto the hardwood floor and without further speech, Lily kneels onto the grits. Her father sits in a chair nearby while watching her and drinking a beer.
The next morning, Rosaleen, their negro housekeeper is shown sweeping up the grits. She asks Lily how long she was kept on the grits. Lily replies that she was there for an hour. As Lily sits down, Rosaleen surprises her with a cake for her 14th birthday. As T.Ray walks into the room, Rosaleen states that she is going to take Lily into town to buy her a training bra. T.Ray reluctantly hands her money and quietly says "happy birthday" as he walks out of the room. On TV they all see that the civil rights bill was passed.
When Rosaleen and Lily start to walk downtown, they are comfronted by four racists who call Rosaleen some bad names, and in return, Rosaleen pours her jar of spit on their feet. Unwilling to apologize, she is beat up by them and, screaming, Lily is held back.
After T.Ray and Lily get back home, Lily says that, "You know most girls would want toys or whatever for their birthday but I was thinkin' . . . maybe instead you could tell me 'bout my mother instead."
T.Ray replies that her mother would always spend hours luring bugs out of the house with "graham crackers and marshmallows and stuff", but he would always just kill 'em. He then looks down to see a roach crawling across the ground, and steps on it.
Lily still demands to know more about her and her father replies that she left and when she came back, she got all of her stuff but she wanted to leave Lily behind. When Lily calls him a liar, he is furious and tells her to stay in her room. When he leaves the house, Lily leaves a letter saying ". . . don't even bother to look for me . . . " and leaves the house. She then goes to the hospital to the "colored ward" and finds Rosaleen. Rosaleen and her run away to a town where Lily's mother was thought to have once lived in. Instead they find a honey jar with the same picture of the Virgin Mary as was on the slab of wood that Lily retained. When they ask the storeowner who made this honey, he leads them to the negro house of August Boatwright and her sisters, May and June. May used to have a twin, April who is revealed to have died later in the movie.
Lily experiences growing up in their household and for the first time ever, lives with a real, loving, caring family making honey and being a part of eachothers lives.
Later on, May gets so depressed she drowns herself by placing a large rock upon her chest and laying down in a shallow pool.
August and her sisters decide to change Rosaleen's name to July.
Lily shows August the picture of her mother, and August instantly recognizes her as "Deborah". As August and Lily discuss Lily's mother, Deborah, Lily confesses that she, while trying to help her mother, winds up killing her. Lily breaks down crying and runs to her room. Screaming, Lily throws several jars of honey at the wall, smashing them.
Later on, T.Ray comes to the Boatwright's house looking for Lily. He then gives August permission to take care of Lily for as long as she wanted to stay there. As T.Ray drives off, he admits that the day Deborah left, she wasn't only coming back for her stuff, but coming back for Lily. He says he lied because she wasn't coming back for him.
Lily's voiceover states that she thought, as T.Ray drove off saying "Good Riddance," he was really saying "Lily, you'll be better off here with all of these mothers."
Box Office
Budget:$11,000,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend:$10,527,799 (USA) (17 October 2008) (1 Screen)
Gross:$37,766,350 (USA) (22 February 2009)
Technical Specs
Runtime:USA: 114 min (director's cut) | Canada: 110 min (Toronto International Film Festival)
Sound Mix:DTS | Dolby (as Dolby Stereo) | SDDS
Color:Color
Aspect Ratio:2.35 : 1
For download details :http://torrentz.eu/search?f=The+Secret+Life+of+Bees+%282008%29
