'Honey Bee' Delivers An Authentically Lived-In Tale Of Survival [Review]

Sudbury, Ontario, is home to one of Canada’s largest, and most unique attractions — the Big Nickel. Measuring 30 feet in diameter, and weighing 13,000 kilograms (14.33 tons), the massive landmark is exactly what it sounds like — a huge replica of the 1951 Canadian nickel. It’s a distinct feature in the otherwise indistinct northern Ontario town, one that has endured the harsh Canadian climate’s wear and tear thanks to an inner steel core wrapped by a stainless steel outer core. Though deceptively slight in frame, Honey Bee (Julia Sarah Stone) possesses a similarly flinty and impenetrable fortitude at the center of filmmaker Rama Rau’s feature bearing her name. The Canadian drama traverses the tough territory of sex trafficking but, along the way, deftly navigates around the clichés to deliver an authentically lived-in and hard-won tale of survival.

If it weren’t for the glow on her face that gave it away, the name tattooed on her wrist, and the bejeweled and personalized smartphone case would confirm just how much Honey Bee loves Ryan (Steven Love). But Ryan is her pimp, and Honey Bee is just one in his collection of alarmingly underage girls, all of them making their home together in a roadside motel, and plying their trade under the cover at night at a nearby truck stop. Ryan keeps Honey Bee hanging on with the illusion of a future together, just the two of them, but only after he takes his business to Sudbury, where he has more work lined for his girls. Honey Bee’s hope is shattered when she’s caught in a police raid and sent to a remote farm to stay in Louise’s foster care (Martha Plimpton) and Christian (Peter Outerbridge). Arriving quite loudly on the genteel property in her high heel boots, fishnet stockings, and an army jacket, Honey Bee cloaks herself in an even more discordant attitude. Desperate to get back to Ryan, Honey Bee — Natalie — meets her match in Louise, who is similarly determined in her aim to care for the young woman, and provide the structure she needs to reclaim the life she doesn’t yet realize she’s lost.

On paper, the broad premise for “Honey Bee” — wayward youth clashes with a well-meaning guardian — feels like the ghost of countless familiar and quickly forgotten indies that have come before. Where “Honey Bee” stands apart is that the story doesn’t rely on manufactured conflict to wind its way toward pat resolutions. Co-written by Bonnie Fairweather and Kathleen Hepburn (who has lately earned acclaim for her own feature “The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open”), the filmmakers don’t solely define Natalie through sex work. She’s a young woman who is also battling the same insecurities that every adolescent encounters. Her constant need to fight the world around her is as much a product of being abandoned by her mother and bounced around between foster homes, as it is simply a teenager. Fairweather and Hepburn are also considerate in the characters they place around Natalie. Chante (Michelle McLeod) and Matt (Connor Price), fellow wards of the foster home, are refreshingly decent kids, whose lives for varying reasons have found them with the need for guardianship. The trio eventually works toward a united bond, one shared by their circumstances and an unexpectedly similar streak of rebelliousness. Throughout, the choices made in “Honey Bee” side-step easy sensationalism, and what unfolds a grounded drama that genuinely cares about its characters who are placed down a difficult path.

The performances Rau manages from her cast also help to elevate what could have been a fairly routine drama. Stone, who earned the Toronto International Film Festival Rising Star award in 2014 for her turn in “Wet Bum,” gives another reason to keep her on the radar. She finds the place where Honey Bee’s vulnerability, despondency, and steadfast independence intersect, walking a very challenging blend of moods with ease. Stone also holds her own against an understatedly terrific Plimpton, an unflappable foe for Honey Bee, but one whose well of empathy doesn’t easily run empty. Meanwhile, Love is powerful in Ryan’s role, in a performance whose subtle physicality is palpably threatening every time he looms on screen.

As Natalie is unmoored from a life of manipulation and exploitation, she will first have to understand that the agency she felt she had with Ryan is something she now actually possesses on the farm with Louise. What Natalie chooses to do with this newfound freedom of choice, and the ability to make decisions about the person she will become, “Honey Bee,” tantalizingly leaves open. The journey that Natalie embarks on simply to gain the confidence to face an uncertain future has more than enough sting for one film. [B]

“Honey Bee” is available on all digital platforms starting Nov. 10th.