Border incident: Lemon Tree

The new luxury home of Israel Navon (Doron Tavory) overlooks the border that divides Israel from the West Bank. Just over that border is a well-kept lemon grove tended by Salma (Hiam Abbass), a widow in her late 40s whose children have all grown and moved away. Her trees are so close and so fecund that if he wanted Israel could twist an arm through the wire fence and pluck fruit right from the branches. But according to Israel’s crack team of security advisors this very fecundity “poses an imminent threat to Israeli security,” it’s shady patches a veritable breeding ground for a deadly terrorist ambush. They advise Israel to have the entire grove leveled. Israel is the Israeli Minister of Defense, and he does what he’s told.

So we’ve got a character who seems to represent, to a conspicuous degree, the state of Israel. His name, lest we fail to draw the parallel, is Israel. He’s well spoken, and possesses the confidence of a man accustomed to power, privilege and a sense of entitlement. We’ve got a patch of land that seems to represent, to a conspicuous degree, the people of Palestine. It’s modest but lovely, vulnerable yet resilient, and carries with it a deep personal history. Salma and her elderly assistant are hard-working paragons of proletariat integrity. Salma refuses to allow her trees to be destroyed, even when assured of compensation for her loss. She hires a lawyer named Ziad (Ali Suliman) whose practice barely survives off of whatever divorce suits he can scrounge up. Salma’s case seems hopeless, but her plight earns Ziad’s loyalty. It also appeals to the international media hungry for some fresh human interest to attach to the ongoing story of this fraught region. She takes it to the Supreme Court.

If all this seems rather too forceful an allegory, it’s also, happily, a somewhat misleading set-up. If you’ll pardon the pun, Eran Riklis’ Lemon Tree (Etz Limon) grows on you. While Riklis seems to be cultivating a simplistic spin on David and Goliath, this film’s real roots lie elsewhere. In fact, it’s far less pointedly about the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than it is about the politics of gender and familial roles. Across that fence from Salma, residing in that shaded fortress is Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael), Israel’s lovely wife. Though Mira sympathizes with Salma she never quite manages to do very much about the situation and the two women never quite manage to meet, yet, in some very basic ways that betray their obvious imbalance of power, they share more than either realizes.

Of course the story, written by Riklis and Suha Arraf, who collaborated previously on Riklis’ The Syrian Bride, is fundamentally about Salma, who finds no unconditional support from anyone save Ziad. Her few friends toss around a lot of blanket condemnations of the Israeli government, yet they neither condone her acceptance of compensation nor her fight to keep her land. When, following a scene of truly elegant and understated eroticism, we begin to sense a romance developing between Salma and her significantly younger lawyer, these same friends start coming round to warn her that her supposedly undignified behaviour won’t be tolerated.

Abbass, so moving in The Visitor, embodies Salma with such graceful transitions that her face, so beautiful and imperious, can seem to shift from hard and stoic to smooth and amorous while barely moving a muscle. Every time she applies or removes her headscarf, she conveys her decision with some intricate variation. Salma’s instincts and abilities register as maternal. As we watch her go about her routines, she seems built to tend soil, to prepare food and scrub floors, to graciously fulfill all the expectations of the narrow-minded patriarchy. Yet when the first signs of longing colour her cheeks it’s as though some dormant blood rushes through her. The effect is quietly exhilarating. Lemon Tree is thoughtful and engaging enough, but Abbass’ performance is uncommonly rich in specificity and feeling, and elevates the film to a whole other level.