Fiona Shaw, in an essay for The Conversation, notes that she “is not in love with the ending” of the film adaptation of her 2009 novel Tell It to the Bees.
Both the book and film are about a secret love affair between two women in the 1950s. At the end of the novel, factory worker Lydia Weekes and small-town doctor Jean Markham flee their bigoted U.K. town and find happiness in Italy. But the film doesn’t let the women stay together; after a last kiss on a train platform, the two separate and never see each other again. Director Annabel Jankel, in an interview with AfterEllen, justified the change as making the movie “more true to the time.”
In Shaw’s insightful piece, the novelist acknowledges that movie adaptations, by necessity, have to make alterations to the source material, often due to time constraints; she cites adaptations of works by Philip K. Dick, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, and Jodi Picoult as examples. But she points out that the Tell It to the Bees film crossed a line:
“[W]hy is the changed ending to Tell it to the Bees so significant?” Shaw writes. “Type ‘lesbian endings’ into a search engine and you’ll find out. This is a lesbian happy ending altered by a straight director from sweet to ‘bittersweet.’ Many fans have taken to Twitter and other social media to express disappointment, asking why the girl can’t be allowed to get the girl.
For more critique of the book and film, check out Kirkus’ Screener column on Tell It to the Bees.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
