Pressure is being brought upon me to watch the new Jon Favreau version of The Lion King, but I find myself rather reluctant to give in to it. Mainly this is because we already have a perfectly good animated film along these lines, and I am dubious (to say the least) about this scheme of Disney's to make even more money by doing all their films again. We could move on to consider the notion that cel-animated anthropomorphic animals talking and singing can be moderately charming, whereas photorealistic CGI ones doing the same thing is just weird, but I think you get the idea. (This is essentially a principled objection as I pay flat rate for most of my cinema tickets and thus the money that goes to the Mouse Corporation is only notionally mine, but let's not worry about that too much.)

Anyway, said pressure takes two forms – firstly, friends proclaiming they would rather go and see the Favreau film than any of the alternatives I propose. Now, I suppose that actually the second form of pressure is linked to the first – the reason there aren't many especially attractive films around at the moment is because the film about the regal cat is showing thirteen bloomin' times a day just at the six-screen Odeon. As usual Disney are using their leverage to squeeze everyone else out.

You have to look further afield for counter-programming these days, but it is there if you search for it. One of the hopefuls currently is Annabel Jankel's Tell It to the Bees, based on a novel by Fiona Shaw (not the actress). Jankel is perhaps best known for her role as one of the creators of Max Headroom, many years ago, but this is an entirely by-the-numbers hats-and-ciggies period melodrama.

The novel is apparently set in Yorkshire, but the film has drifted a few hundred miles north, presumably because Creative Scotland helped out with the financing. Holliday Grainger plays Lydia, a young single mother having a tough time in the small town where she lives: her husband (Emun Elliott) has walked out on her and her son, and she is struggling to cover the rent with the money she makes working in the local factory. It is, as they say, grim up north, even in 1952.

New in town, sort of, is the doctor, Jean Markham (Anna Paquin) – she grew up here but has spent many years living away, possibly because of rumours that are still doing the rounds. Well, when Lydia's son is slightly hurt, he is taken to the doctor by his cousin and shows an interest in the beehives in her garden. As well as setting up the bee motif which continues through the movie, it also enables a rather laborious cute-meet between Lydia and Jean.

From this point on the film takes an unusual twin-track approach when it comes to surprising the audience. Much of the time it seems to give up on this notion entirely, for in terms of the actual plot, not much happens which you will not see coming a very long way in advance. Lydia gets kicked out of her house and she and the lad end up moving in with the doctor, supposedly as her housekeeper. Cue many significant moments between the two of them, supposedly charged with a keen erotic frisson (your mileage may vary). Sure enough they eventually give in to the powerful feelings that have developed between them (and, to be fair, the girl-on-girl stuff is handled in a classy enough way). But how will the poorly-educated and small-minded inhabitants of a Scottish town in the Fifties react to this sort of romance? Can they find a way to be together?

All that saves the film from total predictability is the other strand, which happens to concern the bees themselves. As I said, there is clearly some sort of a bee motif going on here, and much money has been spent on footage of bees in and around their hive, doing all the stuff that bees do. But if there is some sort of bee metaphor going on here, it is not at all clear what it is supposed to represent – there's a lot of slightly eggy dialogue about telling your secrets to the bees, and some references to dancing bees that ties in with dancing as a repeated idea in the main story, but it still doesn't feel especially coherent. And then as the film nears its conclusion –

Well, I should provide a little bit of context and say that this is one of those period films which lays it on a bit thick when it comes to the dourness, grit and misery, particularly as it goes on. Part of this is general, part of seems to be a bit more purposeful – there are only two significant adult male characters, and one of them is blandly feckless, the other a brute of toxic masculinity; the rest of the writing employs a rather broad brush, if not actually a trowel, too. And yet into all this comes an utterly bizarre sequence involving the bees behaving in a strikingly un-beelike manner. To say more would be to spoil what's essentially the climax of the film, but it is a proper 'You what?!?' moment when it arrives.

It goes without saying that the costume-drama element of the film is well done; it is very unusual to come across a British film where this sort of thing is fumbled. And I suppose the performances are creditable, if not exactly striking. (Financing comes with hidden strings attached, however, as moving the setting means that Anna Paquin has to spend the film attempting to do a Scottish accent. We do not quite end up in Dick Van Dyke territory (a possibly infelicitous allusion there), but neither does she exactly cover herself in glory.) In the end this is a film which attempts to use artfulness and metaphor to disguise the fact it is a deeply predictable and not especially engaging or credible melodrama, but just ends up feeling odd and slightly pretentious as a result. As far as this story goes, you can tell it to the bees if you like, but I'm not sure they'll be more interested than anyone else.

Also This Week...

…just what we need to cheer ourselves up, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the forces of hard-right populism, in the form of Alison Klayman's The Brink. Klayman follows self-styled political guru and demagogue Steve Bannon around for many months between his departure from the Trump White House and last year's midterms, chronicling his attempts to set up a global alliance of extreme nationalists (Bannon is well-supplied with cash from various shadowy benefactors, but there still seems to be something of an irony shortage going on) and be a cheerleader for Trump. There is the odd funny moment arising from Bannon's lack of self-awareness and the general uselessness of his associates, but this is about as grim as you would expect; still an important film for anyone who cares about the state of the world. Klayman steps well back and barely attempts to skew the film against her subject at all, and he still comes across as a glib, smug, nasty piece of work, almost entirely through his own words. Possibly some crumbs of comfort there; but this is a film you watch to be informed, not entertained, anyway.

Awix

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