Butler's Cinema Scene

Charlotte Gainsbourg in "The Tree"

“THE TREE”  My rating: B  (Opens Sept. 16 at the Tivoli)

minutes | MPAA rating: 

The Australian drama “The Tree,” writer/director Julie Bertucelli’s tale of a rural family slowly healing in the wake of a death features some knockout acting (especially from several child performers),  lovely cinematography and production design and a lingering mood of loss and spiritual yearning that’s hard to shake.

The O’Neill family is sent reeling when its husband/father Peter dies of a heart attack, leaving behind his wife Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and four children ranging in age from four to 16.

Peter suffered the attack while driving. His pickup truck coasted to a stop at the foot of the gigantic fig tree that spreads like a huge mushroom over their ramshackle house on a country road.

In the following weeks Dawn is nearly catatonic with grief. The task of keeping the family fed and clothed falls to her oldest son (Christian Byers), who’s already laying plans to begin his adult life elsewhere.

Morganna Davies

While Mama mopes, daughter Simone (Morgana Davies), an iron-willed eight-year-old, spends time nestled in the roots or the branches of the big fig tree. She comes to believe that her father’s spirit now inhabits the tree and speaks to her when she places her ear against the bark.

The tree is stupendously impressive (Nigel Bluck’s widescreen photography captures it in all its arboreal glory), but it’s also a source of friction and concern. The darn thing grows quickly, sending out roots that are ravaging concrete pads, invading sewer pipelines and incurring the wrath of a neighbor lady.

It’s a safety issue, too…at one point a gigantic limb comes crashing down on Dawn’s bedroom.

Little Simone, though, turns fiercely defiant when workmen arrive to cut it down. She climbs high, bringing with her blankets, food and water, and refuses to come down.

All this is tension is magnified when Dawn begins seeing a local man (Marton Csokas of “The Debt”); for Simone this is the ultimate betrayal of her father.

This impasse can only be resolved by a sort of deus ex machina — a cyclone that pretty much flattens everything in its path.

Top honors here go to the look, to young Morgana Davies (yet another great performance by a young child) and by Bertucelli’s handling of her young players, who never once let on that they’re aware that they’re being filmed.

| Robert W. Butler