{"id":279704,"date":"2024-01-18T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2024-01-18T18:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmobsessive.com\/?p=279704"},"modified":"2024-01-17T12:21:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T18:21:47","slug":"life-and-love-unfold-under-the-fig-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmobsessive.com\/film\/new-releases\/life-and-love-unfold-under-the-fig-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Life and Love Unfold Under the Fig Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"
Under the Fig Trees<\/em>, Tunisia’s 2023 Official Academy Award nomination, is as delicate and enticing as freshly-picked ripe fruit, a film set on a single hot summer day in a picturesque orchard where a crew of workers navigates work, love, and life under the ever watchful gaze of their foreman. The film’s premise is elegantly simple, just a day in the life of orchard workers, and there is no traditional narrative other than the passage of the workday; freed from genre conventions and narrative expectations, the film presents a sunny, smart harvest of pithy observations and gentle moments.<\/p>\n The workers arrive at dawn, piling into the bed of a small pickup truck that conveys them to the orchard. Even in the ritual of boarding, there are conflicts and challenges: who gets to sit in the cab, who can board first, what one can do—or not—on the way. The orchard itself makes for a fascinating setting. It is strictly bound, its parameters defined, but also porous: the workers can, discreetly, steal away a few precious moments, or even a few poached figs, but they are under watch and must keep to its prescribed boundaries. The blazing sun dapples, but the trees themselves provide a thick cover, their branches often restricting characters’ point-of-view or creating small pockets for private conversations. The orchard provides relief, but it also oppresses.<\/p>\n