Title: The Tree

Opens: July 15, 2011

It’s an old story. A woman gets divorced or her husband dies. The woman takes up with another man. The children are furious. Julie Betucelli in her second film feature gives the story her personal slant, in line with her first film, “Since Otar Left.” That 2003 movie deals with letters sent to a mother and daughter from an adored son in Paris. When the daughter learns that Otar has died, she conceals the truth from her mother. “The Tree” is likewise about a mother-daughter relationship and how the death of the little girl’s father impacts on the family. The pace is smooth, though the only razzle-dazzle takes place in the climactic conclusion when nature casts a mean additional blow on a grieving woman and her children.

Bertucelli adapted the story from July Pascoe’s short novel “Our Father Who Art in the Tree”—a book whose thematic sentence is uttered by a ten-year-old girl “It was simple for me, the saints were in heaven and guardian angels had extendable wings like batman and my dad had died and gone to live in the tree in the back yard.” The novel, unlike the movie, finds the eight-year-old girl rather than the mother most unwilling to give up the tree, which the youngster believes harbors the ghost of her father.

The switch, giving more weight the eight-year-old, is a fortuitous one, because Morgana Davies, who is seven and one-half years old during the nine weeks’ filming in the Australian Outback, delivers a stunning performance, one of the best in years for kids about her age.

The first moments establish the relationship between young Simone O’Neil (Morgana Davies) and her father, the little girl certain that she is her dad’s favorite rather than Tim (Christian Bayers), Lou (Tom Russell), or Charlie (Gabriel Gotting). When the father (played by Aden Young) dies suddenly in his truck, the scene witnessed by Simone who is riding with him, the girl is convinced that her dad speaks to her from the big fig tree, a belief that finds the skeptical mom, Dawn O’Neil (Charlotte Gainsbourg), joining. Soon both Simone and Dawn are seen sleeping in the branches. Symbolically the tree helps to heal the two while at the same time prevents them from moving ahead in life, though eight months past the death of the family breadwinner, Dawn takes up with the owner of a plumbing store, George (Marton Csokas). The daughter in particular must choose whether to let go and stop George from cutting it down—which is not likely since the rustling of the leaves convinces her that her dad is whispering—or whether to allow the tree to destroy the family’s rickety house as the roots push against the shack causing frogs to emerge from the toilet.

Nature will make the decision in a shocking conclusion. Charlotte Gainsbourg acts her heart out in grief and at the same time knows how to step back and allow the gifted Morgana Davies to challenge both her and the man she hooks up with. “Oh, really!” is a typical rejoinder from the eight-year-old when the mother tries to deny her growing involvement with a potential stepdad for the child.

Nigel Bluck’s camera affords a supernatural patina to the fig tree with solid tech achievements all around. Morgana Davies will soon be seen With Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill in David Nettheim’s “The Hunter,” about a mercenary sent from Europe to Tasmania to hunt for the last Tasmanian tiger

Unrated. 100 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall : B