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The tree - Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marton Csokas, Aden Young, Julie Bertuccelli

Threat advisory: Elevated - Significant risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

After the sudden death of her father, Peter (Aden Young), 8-year-old Simone (Morgana Davies) shares a secret with her mother Dawn. (Charlotte Gainsbourg) She's convinced her father speaks to her through the leaves of her favourite tree and he's come back to protect them.

But the new bond between mother and daughter is threatened when Dawn starts a relationship with George (Marton Csokas), the plumber, called in to remove the tree's troublesome roots.

As the branches of the tree start to infiltrate the house, the family is forced to make an agonising decision. But have they left it too late?

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film Australia drama tree country family death father childhood play symbolism child farm grief coping mother daughter

Persons of interest

Charlotte Gainsbourg .... Dawn O'Neil
Marton Csokas .... George
Christian Byers .... Tim
Morgana Davies .... Simone O'Neil
Arthur Dignam .... Uncle Jack
Gabriel Gotting .... Charlie
Penne Hackforth-Jones .... Mrs Johnson
Gillian Jones .... Vonnie
Tom Russell .... Lou
Aden Young .... Peter
Judy Pascoe .... Author
Elizabeth J Mars .... Screenwriter
Julie Bertuccelli .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

The tree official movie sites:

The tree film production notes
The tree movie trailers:

QuickTime
YouTube

Awards and film festivals:

Australian Film Institute (AFI) 2010: Nominated: Best film (Sue Taylor, Yaël Fogiel), Best direction (Julie Bertuccelli), Best adapted screenplay (Julie Bertuccelli), Best lead actress (Morgana Davies, Charlotte Gainsbourg), Young actor award (Morgana Davies), Visual effects award (Dave Morley, Felix Crawshaw, Claudia Lecaros, Tim Walker)

Studios and distributors:

Transmission Films * Paramount Pictures

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

There are a lot of films about parents coping with the sudden death of their partner coming out nowadays. The tree, The boys are back, Genova, Quiet chaos (Caos calmo). I can't relate to this because I am not now, nor have I been, nor do I plan to be a parent coping with the sudden death of their partner. Life sucks enough without that sort of drama.

The question, then, is whether this Australian film can tough it out with the bigger-budget movies that surround it. Well, it's got some name actors, it's got an international star, it's got some drought, it's got the best set decoration of all time, it's got some precocious child performers, it's got an uncompromising script, it's got an uptight neighbour. It's got a hot dead guy and a sexy leading man and a hot and sexy leading woman. It's got passion and drama and emotion and light touches of humour. It's got the beautiful, harsh, uncompromising, amazing Australian landscape. It's got the love that turns your heart to stone when it leaves. It's got people who disagree and people who won't do what they're told and people who aren't very good at what they really, really need to be good at. It's got unbalanced relationships. That's a shipboard of good stuff to have in your film.

What's best about it is that this is the only one that's from the woman's point of view; it's always good to see a woman behaving as badly as a man.

The Australia, drama movie The tree is directed by Julie Bertuccelli and stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marton Csokas, Aden Young.