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You are here: Home Leisure Cinema review Cinema review: Whispers in the branches

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11/08/2011Cinema review: Whispers in the branches

Cinema review: Whispers in the branches Picturenose's Otilia Ilie reviews writer-director Julie Bertuccelli's The Tree (2010), an adaptation of the novel Our Father Who Art in the Tree by Judy Pascoe, which closed the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

The Tree (2010)

It’s a family drama with a difference, set in Boonah in Queensland, Australia, where there is a huge Morten Bay fig tree that ‘whispers’.

Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Peter (Aden Young) are enjoying a beautiful life, together with their four children. However, when Peter dies from a heart attack, the 8-year-old only daughter Simone (brilliantly played by Morgana Davies), starts believing that her father’s soul is still alive in the tree, and that he is whispering to her every time she climbs up there.

But, far from being a fantasy or creepy, the movie’s true purpose is touchingly unveiled – as time passes, Dawn starts to believe her daughter and she herself begins to talk to the tree.

The Tree (2010) © Studio / Produzent
Morgana Davies aka Simone O'Neil in The Tree (2010)

There is grief, beyond words. We see Dawn as being incapable of carrying on with her life and of taking care of her children, then undergoing her spiritual death and awakening. She is able to overcome her grief, and take a job in a plumbing store, where George (Marton Csokas) is more than willing to help her get on with her life. But there is a limit – when George wants to cut down the tree, as Simone refuses to leave its branches…

Bertuccelli has certainly won her spurs as a director but, then again, she learned from the best, serving as assistant on Krzysztof Kieslowski’s sublime Three Colors: Blue (1993), then later graduating to her own TV project with Un monde en fusion (2001) then a big-screen break with Since Otar Left (2003).

The Tree (2010) © Studio / Produzent
Charlotte Gainsbourg aka Dawn O'Neil in The Tree (2010)

Here, she manages to combine pathos with real poetry: the unwritten poetry of nature, of souls and grief, of passion and tears. There is confusion, as well – the ending leaves us with an unfinished sense of seeking…a search for the heart and home, perhaps?

While Elizabeth J. Mars' involved (but involving) screenplay adaptation may at times render the film as feeling somewhat unfocused, with a multitude of developments perhaps cluttering the narrative a little, this is nevertheless still a very touching story that resonates in the right places.



100 mins.
Otilia Ilie

Please check local listings before travelling. For more reviews, check out  www.picturenose.com

 

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