Review by Cameron Maitland

Like a tried and true genre, some world issues get worn and start to seem cliché when returned to relentlessly on film. That’s why Eran Riklis's Lemon Tree, a film dealing both directly and metaphorically with the Israel-Palestine conflict, needs finesse in telling its story.

Lemon Tree follows the intertwined lives of two women - one a Palestinian lemon farmer living along the Israel border and the other (her neighbour), the wife of the new Israeli Defence Minister. When the secret service deems the Palestinian lemon grove a security threat, it begins a cold war of lawyers, guard posts and fences in which the two women are caught, with little say in their own destinies.

As a political metaphor the film is cumbersome and obvious in its execution but, thankfully, as a drama the film is a delight. Each character has layers and intricacies that betray the heavy-handedness of the political agenda. Though it is a film about bitter fighting, there are heavy doses of whimsy and humour that accompany the day-to-day lives of these two women and especially the outside players in their lives. The acting and directing also serve to raise the film, with truly effective and subtle performances, above the level of propaganda.

Lemon Tree proves that it doesn’t take a fresh political view or strange artistic hand to re-tell the same ideals that other films have touched on before. Instead it simply takes a good story, well told with enough unique flavour to keep it afloat.

Lemon Tree
Eran Riklis | Israel | 2008 | 106min