Dir. Eran Riklis, Israel/Germany/France 2008,106 mins, Arabic/Hebrew with subtitles
Cast: Hiam Abbass, Rona Liopaz-Michael, Doron Tavory, Ali Suliman
Review by Carol Allen Although set in contemporary Israel, this story of a woman being bullied by and ultimately fighting authority has the universality, as one of the characters points out, of the biblical tale of David and Goliath.
Salma (Abbass), a Palestinian widow, whose children have all left home, scrapes a meagre living from cultivating her lemon grove, which was planted by her father, when she was a child. But when the Israeli Minister for Defence moves into the house next door, his security forces claim that her grove is a threat to the minister's safety – terrorists could hide there – and must be chopped down as a matter of “military necessity”. At first helpless, Salma then finds a lawyer Ziad (Suliman), who takes up her case and fights it as far as the supreme court, making Salma and her lemon grove into a major news event.
The story is told with simplicity, great attention to detail and sometimes quiet and unexpected humour, as in the ridiculous over reaction of the security forces and in the character of the young soldier assigned to guard the grove, who whiles away the dull hours of inaction by studying logic – an ironic choice under the circumstances. The contrast between Salma's simple but well cared for home and the contemporary comfort of the Minister's house is pointed but the film is not concerned with politics but with the people, whose lives are affected by political decisions. While the Minister (Tavory), whose first name is Israel, is a typical self-important politician capable of considerable hypocrisy, his wife Mira (Liopaz-Michael) finds her sympathies are with the widow and her lemon grove. A suggestion of attraction between Salma and her lawyer is handled with great delicacy, and the lemon grove itself touches our hearts. While the case is pending, the security forces fence off the grove and when Salma, heartbroken as she sees her trees dying from lack of attention, climbs over the fence to tend them, she is brutally evicted from her own property on the grounds that the area is one of “mortal danger”.
Abbass at the centre of film has a quiet dignity and strength of spirit, poignantly making us aware of what it is to be a second-class citizen. And though this ostensibly a small film, it is one that has a universal significance much greater than its scale.
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