Tell It To the Bees is a tender mid-century love story cloaked in human frailty, and it begins promisingly enough — only to falter mid-way through. Newly single mother Lydia (Grainger) has been left with her young son Charlie (Gregor Selkirk) in a small Scottish town, where in the 1950s, single motherhood was a one-way ticket to desperation. Things grow increasingly tough for her as she struggles to maintain a factory job, but there’s a bright spot in all this: her friendship with local doctor and part-time-beekeeper Jean (Paquin). Jean is tender and kind to Lydia’s little boy, and slowly the two women’s relationship blossoms into a steamy romance. But the treatment of lesbian love leaves much to be desired: the shorthand of suppressed yearning, sideways glances and secretive gestures feels overfamiliar and a little tedious.
Filmed by DP Bartosz Nalazek, the muted colours of post-war Scotland are curiously lush and infused with natural light. Though it manages to muddle through on the strength of Grainger and Paquin’s performances, it’s in the final section that Tell It To The Bees really falls down. In a sequence of events jarringly out of step with the softness of the film, bullying and cruelty are visited upon the female characters in a desultory and unnecessary way. Ultimately, the film sags with the weight of too much endless longing on the part of its characters