Under the Fig Trees review – beguiling battle of the sexes in Tunisian fields – The Guardian
French-Tunisian documentary maker Erige Sehiri makes a watchable fiction characteristic with this shrewd, sympathetic ensemble research, which takes place as promised within the title: over a single working day in a fig tree orchard in Kesra, north-western Tunisia. Day by day a truck comes to select up a crowd of individuals doing cash-in-hand work choosing the fruit: largely ladies, younger and outdated, and a few males. The lengthy working day unfolds because the shadows shorten, then lengthen and friendships, enmities, generational and political disputes and embryonic and failed amorous affairs are revealed to us.
The film is basically improvised and Sehiri seems typically to have arrange particular conditions for 2 or three characters to work round, so there are some barely protracted, shapeless, acting-class improv conversations and arguments, and even some improv combating; typically the movie loses its narrative traction. However the free model provides the movie a straightforward and engaging swing and there are occasions when it seems to be very actual: the second when the dilapidated tailgate falls off the again of the truck was absolutely genuine.
The important thing relationship is that between Fidé (Fidé Fdhili) a younger feminine employee and her boss. As a substitute of clambering into the again of the truck with all of the others she will get to experience up entrance with him and doesn’t care concerning the gossip. With that single gesture, Sehiri encapsulates the sexual politics: ladies are compelled to decide on between sisterly solidarity and what compromised status and benefit they’ll acquire via a relationship with a person.
Sehiri was reportedly impressed by the light-hearted “Marivaudage”, the bantering dialogue discovered within the work of 18th-century creator Pierre de Marivaux, an inspiration she shares with one other French-Tunisian director, Abdellatif Kechiche, whose 2003 movie Video games of Love and Likelihood is about youngsters rehearsing Marivaux’s play of the identical title.
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