Original title: Undir trénu

Iceland  –  Comedy, Drama  –  Year: 2017  –  Running time: 89 mins
Language: Icelandic

Audience Response:

Rating: (4.0 from 37 responses)

• Excellent’: 11 votes
• ‘Very Good’: 18 votes
• ‘Good’: 6 votes
• ‘Satisfactory’: 1 votes
• ‘Poor’: 1 votes

Read the comments here or visit our “Under The Tree” discussion page

Synopsis:

Family drama and black comedy mix in a distinctive, freewheeling study of suburban warfare.  When Atli is turfed out of his family house he has to move back in with his parents. They are in a bitter dispute with their younger neighbours over a tree shared by both houses.  Is it a beautiful piece of nature or an annoying obstruction to sunbathing?  Acute social drama, alive to the pettiness of any two sides unwilling to back down.

… an exhilaratingly sly dark comedy about ordinary suburbanite folk going from unglued to unhinged to ultimately undone.
Bruce DeMara (Toronto Star)

Director: Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson
Paris of the North (2014) / Either Way (2011)
Cast:
Steinþór Hróar Steinþórsson              …   Atli
Edda Björgvinsdóttir                           …   Inga
Sigurður Sigurjónsson                        …   Baldvin
Þorsteinn Bachmann                          …   Konrad
Selma Björnsdóttir                              …   Eybjorg
Lára Jóhanna Jónsdóttir                     …   Agnes
Dóra Jóhannsdóttir                             …   Rakel
Sigrídur Sigurpálsdóttir Scheving       …   Asa
(for full cast, and more information, see “Under The Tree” in IMDB)

CFC Film Notes

Lest the people of Iceland be getting complacent about their ranking as the fourth happiest country in the world, here’s an unsettling film sniffing at something rotten at the back of the
fridge – behind the paid-for higher education, hang-up-free sex and tastefully minimal
interiors.

The film’s director, Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, has said his inspiration for Under the Tree was Iceland’s high rate of “neighbour rage”:  over-the-fence feuds between ordinary respectable people.  Blame the Viking DNA.  He skillfully constructs his film as part-thriller, part-intelligent relationship drama, topped with a juicy dollop of savage black comedy.

It begins with young mother Agnes (Lára Jóhanna Jónsdóttir) walking in on her partner Atli (Steinþór Hróar Steinþórsson) watching a sex tape on his laptop of himself with another woman.  When she kicks him out, Atli skulks back to mum and dad in the suburbs.  His parents are locked in a dispute with neighbours over a tree in their garden blocking sunlight on to next door’s patio.  When his mum Inga (Edda Björgvinsdóttir) refuses to trim the tree, the battle lines are drawn.

The two stories play out in parallel.  Agnes ghosts Atli, changing the locks and refusing him access to their daughter.  At his parents’ house things get nasty: tyres slashed, a dog disappears, and some unspeakable business happens in the garage with a nail gun.

It is not so much a criticism as an observation to say that, until minutes before the end, Under the Tree is meticulously balanced and measured.  Sigurðsson is no misanthrope and his humane message – that everyone is muddling along as best they can – makes all the feuding and bile easier to stomach.  Some may prefer a little more bite.  And there is enough here to prompt a little Nordic envy, too: beautiful mid-century kitchen cabinets and an absurdly good-looking blond male nursery worker wearing a homespun Fair Isle jumper, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Sarah Lund.

Cath Clarke – The Guardian

Selected UK reviews:

London Evening Standard (Demetrios Matheou)
Guardian (Cath Clarke)
Independent (Geoffrey Macnab)

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