Life 2.0
Staff Favorite
Synopsis
Based on Sue Monk Kidd’s best-selling novel set in small-town South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees centers on Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning), a 14 year-old haunted by the memory of her late mother and desperate to escape her abusive father. One day she and her caregiver and only friend (Jennifer Hudson) flee to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by the independent Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Sophie Okendoe, and Alicia Keys), Lily finds solace in the mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and The Black Madonna. Entertainment Weekly reports that director Gina Prince-Bythewood sent her young cast, most of whom had no experience of what life in the segregated South of the period could be like, to a store where the clerks were hired to behave as if it were the 1960s—-quite an experience for her Obama-generation cast.
