TELL IT TO THE BEES
★★★★★
(15) (15) THERE’S a powerful sting in this bittersweet coming-ofage post-war period drama which is based on Fiona Shaw’s 2009 novel, and successfully transfers the setting from Yorkshire to southern Scotland to exploit the austere beauty of Stirling.
In a lovely natural performance, young Gregor Selkirk plays Charlie Weekes, a boy who gets hurt in the playground defending the honour of his single mother, which leads to her meeting the glamorous local doctor.
Manchester actress Holliday Grainger and Oscar winner and star of TV’s True Blood, Anna Paquin, cause a buzz of gossip in the small town as a relationship develops.
An eloquent cry for compassion which is horribly relevant today, the script skewers hypocrisy, prejudice and how women are punished by societal pressures.
It’s a finely crafted and moving watch, which is all the more remarkable for being directed by Annabel Jankel, who co-made the awful video game adaptation Super Mario Bros. economic exploitation of the industrial revolution.
Gwen is the teenage daughter whose father is away at war. She must help her mother in the running of their small impoverished sheep farm.
Merseyside-born Eleanor Worthington Cox gives a wonderfully plaintive performance in the title role.
Maxine Peake plays her mother with a grim and wounded ferocity, and she contributes to this being a far more engrossing and articulate experience than 2018’s similarly themed period drama Peterloo, in which Peake also starred.