In the past few years the Israeli Arab actress Hiam Abbass has become a cinematic force of nature — an Anna Magnani of the Middle East. Her best recent role was probably the bride’s older sister in 2004’s “The Syrian Bride,” wearily coping with the ruinous surrealism of borders and national identity.
That film’s writer-director, Eran Riklis, has put Abbass front and center in his latest film, “Lemon Tree,” and the star rewards her director’s trust with a performance that keeps shooting out unexpected tendrils of observation. She creates an emotional anchor for a movie that keeps lurching into the political.
But everything is political in Israel, according to Riklis and his co-writer Suha Arraf — even a lemon grove that has stood unbothered in the West Bank for half a century.
A Palestinian widow named Salma Zidane (Abbass) has been eking a living selling lemonade since inheriting the grove from her father. As the film opens, the Israeli defense minister, Israel Navon (Doron Tavory), moves into a mansion next door. His security chief (Linon Banares) looks at the trees and sees a terrorist in every one. Down the lemon grove must come.
The widow decides to fight, hiring a young Euro-educated lawyer (Ali Suliman) to take the case all the way to Israel’s Supreme Court. The story becomes a national lightning rod, then an international one. It’s a David and Goliath story, but here David is a Palestinian woman.
Based loosely on a true incident, “Lemon Tree” is essentially about gentrification and class differences, but because it’s set in Israel, it has to be about ethnicity and the endless shadow of history as well. Riklis adds another strain — that of gender. The woman most sympathetic to Salma’s plight is the defense minister’s chic wife, Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael), a prisoner of her husband’s ambitions and security apparatus.
The film constantly underlines the similarities between the two women — both have grown children in America; both are kept in check by their cultures’ macho.
It’s an emotionally loaded story with a visual emphasis on walls and fences, specifically, the towering West Bank wall cutting the area in two. As the grove slowly withers, though, the main character starts to bloom.
Referencing the popular song, the movie’s title reminds us that “the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.” That is Riklis’s deeply frustrated view of his country’s stalemate, but you can only take a metaphor so far before it falters in the face of endless geopolitical complexity.
The movie’s worth seeing for Abbass, though. Riklis keeps trying to turn Salma into Mother Palestine, but the star knows better. She just makes her real.
“Lemon Tree”
Not rated. mild violence and language, ethnic strife. 1 hour, 46 minutes. Partially subtitled. Directed by Eran Riklis; written by Riklis and Suha Arraf; starring Hiam Abbass, Ali Suliman, Danny Leshman, Rona Lipaz-Michael, Tarik Kopty, Amos Lavi, and Amnon Wolf. Opens today at the Chez Artiste.
