VividSimon Simply Perfect

Steineded How sad is this?

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

tom van de Bospoort For this very good title my mother was watching it with me after recording it off film4. she was screaming and outraged at the treatment of the lady with the lemon tree grove and how the head of defence across the border was treating her with such a bad attitude, portrayed as if he was opposing the cut down, when really he was supporting the deforestation of her family grove of lemons.The film follows her struggle even showing how the defence minister has uprooted other groves elsewhere in the from of olive trees in the safety of people and the worry of terrorism, which is what seals her trees fate.The state and the government of Israel against a Palestinean agriculturist, this film is truly moving and makes you side for the 'little people'. Not many films get me so on side like this but this is good and shows how in those countries the people and especially women are treated bad and are not taken into account.A must see, for womens rights.

lastliberal Hiam Abbass (The Visitor) is outstanding as Salma, a Palestinian widow with a lemon grove that ekes out a meager living. Unfortunately, the Israeli Defence Minister moves in next door and wants the lemon grove gone for security reasons.Just like governments everywhere, there is no concern for the effect of rulings on individuals. The Defence Minister (Doron Tavory) is too busy chasing skirts to care. His wife (Rona Lipaz-Michael) cares, but has to put up with his philandering and his dismissal of her concerns. But Salma won't give up without a fight.She certainly gets no help from the local Palestinian politicians, who don't like rocking the boat.She goes to a local court and is dismissed, so she decides to go to the Israeli Supreme Court. Mira (Lipaz-Michael) gets more involved as the case drags on. The relationship with her lawyer (Ali Suliman) also gets more involved.The film shows the impossibility of Palestinian - Israeli relations ever getting better.

Linda This film is rich in irony. It presents a microcosm of Israeli-Palestinian relations that go nowhere and lack empathy, but create torment for both sides. The Israeli Defense Minister and his wife (the Navons) move into a large, modern home at the Green Line, the border of the West Bank of the Jordan River to the east. Their neighbor is a middle-aged widow (Salma Zidane) who lives alone in a stone house and tends a lemon grove she inherited from her father from which she ekes a modest income. She is assisted by an elderly man who has worked for the family for 50 years. The defense minister's nervous security chief draws down on the two of them as they walk through the grove and surprise him. They never give each other more than uninterested glances. The defense minister accepts the advice that the grove must be cut down for security purposes.The widow receives notice written in Hebrew from a Hebrew-speaking soldier. She does not speak the language and goes to a town elder to translate, invading the all-male sanctum of a social hall. Although the letter offers the possibility of compensation, the elder warns her that her people do not ask the occupying Israelis for it. Soon the grove is fenced in and posted. When she sees the trees turning brown from lack of water and lemons spoiling on the ground, Salma climbs the fence in the long dress to care for the trees. She panics even the distracted soldier in the watch tower who spends time in the tower listening to tapes with inane sample questions to prepare for a logic test. He speaks Arabic, so they can converse.Salma finds a Palestinian attorney in town in a shabby office to take her appeal of the taking of her grove to Israeli court. His name is Daud and like the David of the Jewish Bible, he agrees to take on the giant. He doesn't ask for a fee. The minister's wife (Mira Navon) observes the widow several times. Their eyes meet, but they never greet. They wouldn't likely be able to speak a common language if they did and learn that they each have a child living in Washington DC whom they call. They are close in age and similar in appearance, tall and slim with long, brown hair. One dresses in pants suits, the other in dark long skirts and head covering in front of men. Mira asks her husband to dissolve the order to rescind the order to cut down the grove. He says he will rely on the decision of the Israeli security service. When the Navons throw a big housewarming party, they serve catered Mideastern food, taking care it is kosher for their politically connected orthodox guests. When they realize the caterer did not include an important item, lemons, they send a couple of soldiers to collect some from the fenced grove. When Salma sees them, she climbs the fence again and physically struggles with the soldiers, falling to the ground and being dragged briefly until the minister orders the soldiers to stop. The minister's wife apologizes in Hebrew, her first spoken words. The party is interrupted by gunshots coming from the grove. Armed soldiers search the widow's house for terrorists and leave its contents in shambles after they don't find anyone. Meanwhile their conflict attracts local, then international, news. The grove owner loses in the military court. She wants to appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. In the end the solution is not satisfactory to either side, not an uncommon result in litigation. Could the Israeli defense minister and the grove owner found a way to resolve their concerns in a mutually agreeable way? Probably if they had tried to talk. Both sides were defiant. Will their respective peoples be able to resolve their disputes and live in peace and cooperation for a better life? The film does not give as hope, but shows the need.

Alan P "The Lemon Tree" is a picture that deals with a "hot" subject in low-key, human terms, but fails to really connect on a human level. The leads all deliver solid performances but they don't have much to work with. Characters are drawn in subtle sketches, but the sketches fail to hint at anything other than sketches and there is less subtext than the dialogue's minimalism would suggest. The film attempts to draw parallels between the alienated Israeli minister's wife and the alienated Palestinian widow, but both characters are too passive to create any real drama and neither of them really change. The film even goes as far as to avoid showing on screen some of the characters' pivotal moments, which suggests that the writer-director didn't know his characters well enough to show us how they would behave. A film which appears to be about women on the sidelines of a conflict proves itself to be more about women who are on the sidelines of life itself, but it seems to believe it is making a statement about the nature of national conflicts. Politics kept this viewer interested during the film's short running time, but, politics aside, the film is a minor exercise in the display of pretty actresses and Judean landscapes. Pretty actresses and Judean landscapes nearly make this film worth the price of admission but in a year when Israel also produced "Waltz With Bashir," this one should barely register.