The film opens with scenes of a violent struggle between a husband and his wife, all witnessed by their young daughter. A gunshot sounds and the main protagonist of the film, 14-year-old Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning), cuts in to tell us that she was just four-years-old when she accidentally shot and killed her mother.
Adding to her emotional burden is the fact that her mother was in the middle of leaving Lily’s father, T Ray, when she was shot. Lily suffers a great blow when her dad tells her that her mother had returned that day only to collect her things, not Lily.
While T Ray vents his grief out in expressions of anger and cruelty to Lily, she desperately clings to the few possessions of her mother that she secretly has buried in the fruit orchard at the back of the house – a pair of gloves, a picture, and an odd wooden image of a black Virgin Mary.
When her caretaker and friend Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) is the victim of a brutal race attack, Lily hatches a plan for them to escape to the town written on the portrait of the black Virgin Mary.
Once there, they discover the image of the black Virgin Mary on jars of honey made locally by the Boatwright sisters – May (Alicia Keys), June (Sophie Okonedo) and August (Queen Latifah). The two runaways head to the sisters’ Pepto-Bismol-pink house where they are allowed to stay, and it’s there that Lily finally finds the love and sense of belonging she has searched her whole life to find.
What is so impressive about this film is the vigour with which director Gina Prince-Bythewood deals with the aches, breaks and joys of love. This film is sure to pull on heartstrings you didn’t even know you had.
