Around about this time last year, Charlotte Gainsbourg was in the midst of promoting Antichrist, a nihilistic and wildly divisive Lars Von Trier thriller that shocked most of Cannes with a now-infamous castration scene. Now, twelve months later, Gainsbourg is back in the French Riviera to promote Julie Bertucelli’s The Tree, a film adaptation of “Our Father Who Art in a Tree” the 2003 novel by Australian author Judy Pascoe.
Thankfully there’s no genital mutilation in Gainsbourg’s latest outing but loss still plays a major factor (a son in Antichrist, a husband in The Tree) as does, as the title might suggest, the omnipotence of nature – represented in the latter by a hulking Moreton Bay fig tree – a symbol of nature that’s infinitely more pleasant than this corpse-filled sex plant.
The film closed Cannes on Sunday to mostly-positive reviews and seeing as it’s a co-production between Australia and France that was filmed in Queensland with Australian actors, I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about it soon. The film’s website offers the following synopsis: After the sudden death of her father, 8-year-old Simone shares a secret with her mother Dawn. She’s convinced her father speaks to her through the leaves of her favourite tree and he’s come back to protect them.
