WTxFF REVIEW: Rama Rau’s HONEY BEE gives a documentarian’s edge to its truck stop hooker tale
The buzzing we first hear at the very beginning of HONEY BEE has little to do with hives, except in a metaphorical sense. It’s a tattoo needle, forever imprinting the name of Ryan (Steven Love) on Natalie (Julia Sarah Stone), whom he later takes to a motel to declare his love, as engraved on a cell phone cover. The savvy viewer figures out more quickly than Natalie does that it’s an act; she is but one of many teen hookers in his harem, though perhaps the latest and most gullible to believe he will soon drop the rest and take her out of this life.
I don’t know how accurate HONEY BEE is in its truck-stop hooker shorthand, but it feels plausible enough. The girls display their assets on a bench in view of the parked trucks, as a flashed headlight means acceptance, and a tied bandana on the rearview mirror indicates no knockin’ if the vehicle’s a-rockin’. But before long, this world is intruded upon, as Natalie propositions the wrong cop, and is whisked away to a farm for wayward youth, presided over by Martha Plimpton’s no-nonsense Louise. From here, an experienced filmgoer may imagine where this will go. The sharp-tongued and defensive hooker will melt under a heaping helping of tough country love, and the stern matriarch will finally make a grad gesture to show she cares and save the day at just the right moment. Except no. This isn’t a movie that has much patience for the obvious take.
Director Rama Rau was a documentarian prior to this, and it remains her sole fiction feature to date. This likely gives her an edge in knowing what audiences will and won’t read as B.S. Yes, HONEY BEE understands narrative structure, and with careful editing and scoring, puts the viewer subjectively into Natalie’s head. But it’s not interested in creating artificial cinematic heroes. Plimpton’s former Goonies costars like Josh Brolin and Sean Astin may have gone on to save and destroy various universes, but she’s still here keeping it real.
Cinematographer Steve Cosens (of the outstanding, underseen THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS) makes the world of teen truck hooking, with its winter snow and comforting darkness, feel like an ironically comfortable blanket, despite its horrors. The farm, meanwhile, is all harsh daylight and brutally confined spaces. Natalie doesn’t take to it well, of course, though her sass is harshed by Mama Louise dunking her phone in a fishtank at the first major sign of friction. But soon the protective nature that emerged when keeping her fellow harem girls safe re-emerges, as Nat sees fellow foster kid Chante (Michelle McLeod) recklessly falling under the spell of local high school date rapist Zach (Spencer Macpherson). To the extent that there’s joy to be had in this rough story, it’s in seeing world-weary Natalie effortlessly manipulate the high school’s would-be bad boys who think they’re hardcore, but can’t possibly out-think a survivor who used to blow long-distance drivers for a living.
Casey Manierka-Quaile’s bass heavy score subjectifies Natalie’s headspace, sometimes drowning out what people are trying to say to her, and others offering plaintive laments for what could be. Stone is a strong discovery here, conveying the shell and occasional savvy of the traumatized, and conveying Natalie’s gradual learning curve. As she sees theoretically lesser people get duped, she slowly comes around to seeing that in herself as well. When Hollywood inevitably discovers her, here’s hoping they’ll see her skinny frame in this film as appropriately representing the strung-out and stressed-out, rather than insisting on it as an ideal. With her anime blue hair and stylized make up, this Honey Bee is conspicuously designed as bait and indictment of many modern fetishes. It’s all too frightening to imagine a larger system failing to note that this is a condemnation, and bringing Natalie’s story to reality in the wrong way.
