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''The Tree'' is a French-Australian 2010 film co-produced between Australia and France. It was filmed in the small town of Boonah in
Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...
, Australia, and follows the lives of Dawn (
Charlotte Gainsbourg Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg (; born 21 July 1971) is a British and French actress and singer. She is the daughter of English actress and singer Jane Birkin and French singer Serge Gainsbourg. After making her musical debut with her father on the ...
) and her four children after the unexpected death of her husband Peter (
Aden Young Aden Young (born 30 November 1971) is a Canadian-Australian actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Daniel Holden in the SundanceTV drama '' Rectify'', for which he was twice nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor ...
). The film is an adaptation of the 2002
debut novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to pu ...
'' Our Father Who Art in the Tree'' by Australian writer and performer Judy Pascoe. The film closed the
Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
on 23 May 2010 following the Awards Ceremony and received a seven-minute
standing ovation A standing ovation is a form of applause where members of a seated audience stand up while applauding, often after extraordinary performances of particularly high acclaim. Standing ovations are considered to be a special honor. Often they are ...
. In addition, ''The Tree'' premiered at the 2010
Sydney Film Festival The Sydney Film Festival is an annual competitive film festival held in Sydney, Australia, usually over 12 days in June. A number of awards are given, the top one being the Sydney Film Prize. , the festival's director is Nashen Moodley. Histo ...
. The film is distributed in the US by
Zeitgeist Films Zeitgeist Films is a New York, New York, New York-based distribution company founded in 1988 which acquires and distributes films from the U.S. and around the world. In 2017, Zeitgeist entered into a multi-year strategic alliance with film distr ...
, opening on 15 July 2011 in New York, on 22 July in Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, D.C., and throughout the country over the summer.


Plot

Dawn and Peter O'Neil live together with their children (three boys and a girl), on the outskirts of a small country town. Next to their rambling house stands the kids' favourite playground: a giant
Moreton Bay Fig ''Ficus macrophylla'', commonly known as the Moreton Bay fig or Australian banyan, is a large evergreen banyan tree of the mulberry and fig family Moraceae. It is native to eastern Australia, from the Wide Bay–Burnett region of Queensland i ...
tree (now known in real-life as the Teviotville Tree), whose branches reach high towards the sky and roots stretch far into the ground. Everything seems perfect until Peter suffers a heart attack, crashing his car into the tree's trunk. Dawn is devastated, left alone with her grief and four children to raise. Until one day, 8-year-old Simone, reveals a secret to her mother. She's convinced her father whispers to her through the leaves of the tree and he's come back to protect them. Dawn takes comfort from Simone's imagination, and starts to believe in it herself; just like Simone, Dawn also likes to spend time in the tree. It starts to dominate their physical and emotional landscape. But the close bond between mother and Simone forged through a mutual sorrow and shared secret, is threatened by the arrival of George, the plumber, called in to remove the tree's troublesome roots. As the relationship between Dawn and George blossoms, the tree continues to grow, with its branches infiltrating the house, its roots destroying the foundations. Dawn decides the tree has to go. George and some other workmen arrive, but Simone climbs in the tree to defend it. Dawn and George try to convince her, but she refuses to come down. George argues to Dawn that the girl is only 8 years old, Dawn should not allow her to stop the necessary removal of the tree. This irritates Dawn, and she cancels the operation, and tells George she does not want to see him again. In a big storm the house is demolished by the tree, and the family leaves the area, planning to start living somewhere else, perhaps in a tent.


Cast

*
Charlotte Gainsbourg Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg (; born 21 July 1971) is a British and French actress and singer. She is the daughter of English actress and singer Jane Birkin and French singer Serge Gainsbourg. After making her musical debut with her father on the ...
as Dawn *
Marton Csokas Marton Paul Csokas (, ; born 30 June 1966) is a New Zealand actor of film, stage, and television. A graduate of the Toi Whakaari drama school, he has worked extensively in Australia and Hollywood, along with his native country, and often portr ...
as George *
Aden Young Aden Young (born 30 November 1971) is a Canadian-Australian actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Daniel Holden in the SundanceTV drama '' Rectify'', for which he was twice nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor ...
as Peter * Morgan Davies as Simone * Christian Byers as Tim *Tom Russell as Lou *Gabriel Gotting as Charlie *
Gillian Jones Gillian Jones (born 19 April 1947) is an Australian actress from Newcastle, New South Wales who is best known for appearances in ''Twelfth Night'', '' Oscar and Lucinda'', ''Last Train to Freo'' and the role of Di Paige in the television serie ...
as Vonnie *
Penne Hackforth-Jones Penne Hackforth-Jones (5 August 194917 May 2013) was an American-born Australian actress and biographer. Early life Penelope Beatrix Hackforth-Jones was born in August 1949 in Greenwich, Connecticut, to Paul and Susan Felicity (née Gullett) ...
as Mrs. Johnson *
Benita Collings Benita Collings (born 1940) is an Australian theatre, television and film character actress and children's television presenter best known for her role on ABC TV's '' Play School''. Collings has also featured in documentaries and commercials. ...
as Aunt Mary *
Wendy Playfair Wendy Playfair (born 28 August 1926) is an Australian radio, television and film character actress, best known for her roles in television serials. Playfair started her career in radio serials, but became best known for her brief stint in TV seri ...
as Aunt Harriet


Production

''The Tree'' was written and directed by Julie Bertuccelli, it is based on the screenplay by Elizabeth J. Mars, produced by Sue Taylor of Taylor Media, Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez of Les Films du Poisson, and is a co-production between Australia and France. It came to be a co-production when Julie Bertuccelli was given the book '' Our Father Who Art in the Tree'' by a close friend. When she looked into getting the rights for the film she found that Australian producer Sue Taylor already had them, however she did not have a director. It just so happened that Julie is a director, and from there the co-production was born. The tree used in the film is Teviotville Tree, located in the small town of Teviotville in the state of
Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...
. It has a 34 m spread, 20 m height and 2.31 m diameter at 1 m above ground, which is the narrowest point. The tree has low branches which have not been pruned off, and when they are laden with fruit they reach the ground. It is very rare to find this in a
Moreton Bay Fig ''Ficus macrophylla'', commonly known as the Moreton Bay fig or Australian banyan, is a large evergreen banyan tree of the mulberry and fig family Moraceae. It is native to eastern Australia, from the Wide Bay–Burnett region of Queensland i ...
tree. It is estimated that it was planted in 1880.


Reception

On
review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film has an approval rating of 72% based on 67 critics, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's consensus reads: "Though it leans rather heavily on its central metaphor, The Tree is a moving and ultimately hopeful meditation on grief with shades of magical realism". On
Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, ''The Tree'' holds 58 out of a 100 based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Marjorie Baumgarten of ''
The Austin Chronicle ''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogra ...
'' wrote "Pacing problems and shallow psychological inquiries plague this film almost as much as the overworked metaphor that supplies the film's title.". Sheri Linden of the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' praised Bertuccelli's directing for its use of "the scrubbed topography of Queensland, Australia", adding that "her mystical symbols can be as on-the-nose as her dialogue". A similar praise also came from Patrick Peters of ''
Empire An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...
'' who called the film "An eerie and unsettling adaptation of Judy Pascoe's novel that impresses more for its atmospherics than its narrative". Critics such as Michael O'Sullivan of ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' called ''The Tree'' "not exactly subtle", while
Mick LaSalle Mick LaSalle (born May 7, 1959) is an American film critic and the author of two books on pre-Code Hollywood. Up to March 2008, he had written more than 1,550 reviews for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' and he has been podcasting them since Sep ...
of the ''
San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...
'' said that "It's simply vagueness". According to
Peter Bradshaw Peter Nicholas Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire'' magazine. Early life and education Bradshaw was educat ...
of ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' "The imagery is almost unendurably self-conscious, and Gainsbourg, with her low, musical, murmuring voice, gives the kind of performance you suspect she can do standing on her head. Her final lines are irritating beyond belief".


Soundtrack

Original film music was written and composed by Grégoire Hetzel. The soundtrack features other songs of the film: #"Weak" –
Asaf Avidan Asaf Avidan () is an Israelis, Israeli Singing, singer and songwriter born in Jerusalem. He was raised in Jamaica, and currently resides in Europe. From 2006 to 2011, he was part of the band Asaf Avidan & the Mojos, independently releasing three ...
& The Mojos (3:34) #"Wake" – Grégoire Hetzel (2:58) #"The Tree" – Main Theme – Grégoire Hetzel (3:55) #Chorus of "Die Kriegsknechte aber" from "The Passion according to St. John" – Scholars Baroque Ensemble (1:26) #"Flying Foxes" – The Slippers (2:47) #"Speak to Me" – Grégoire Hetzel (2:55) #"Simone's Theme" – Grégoire Hetzel (3:18) #"The Roots" – Grégoire Hetzel (3:27) #"Shiver Shiver" – The Slippers (3:48) #"Under the Branches" – Grégoire Hetzel (3:55) #"Wounded Tree" – Grégoire Hetzel (3:13) #"To Build a Home" –
The Cinematic Orchestra The Cinematic Orchestra is a British nu jazz and downtempo music group created in 1999 by Jason Swinscoe and later involving his music collaborator Dominic Smith. The group is signed to independent record label Ninja Tune. The Cinematic Orches ...
(6:12) #"Daydream" (Extra Track) – Grégoire Hetzel (8:45)


Notes


References


External links

* *
Zeitgeist takes 2010 Cannes closer ''The Tree''
on indieWiRE
Cannes Closing NightNews Article on ''The Tree''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tree, The Australian Christmas drama films French Christmas drama films 2010s Christmas drama films Zeitgeist Films films French-Australian culture Films about trees Films based on Australian novels Films set in Queensland Films shot in Queensland 2010s English-language films 2010s French films Le Pacte films English-language Christmas drama films