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Fri 12 Dec 2008The Secret Life of Bees
'I KILLED my mother when I was four years old." That's the dramatic first line spoken by sensitive Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) in The Secret Life of Beesafter a prologue depicting her mother's death. It's 10 years on, and Lily, who lives with her volatile widower father (Paul Bettany), still blames herself for that tragic accident.
The film is a timely reminder of a not too distant past: the setting is a small town in South Carolina in 1964, when the prospect of a black man becoming US president was unimaginable. The Civil Rights Act has just been passed, and black people are allowed to vote for the first time.
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