The movie follows a girl, her uncle and a friend as they start an emotional travel to recover a gnarled, thousand-year-old olive tree that is precious to her ailing grandfather.
A deceptively simple drama about a family and its thousand-year-old olive tree that is rooted in the best cinematic soil there is -- emotional truth -- The Olive Tree gets its hooks in early on, and then never lets up.
Painfully well meaning at times, this road movie would work better if some of the worthiness was pruned and if the tree-thieving was not quite so patently ludicrous.
A family and intimate drama with dyes of ecological fable that serves as a metaphor for the economic dynamics in the European Union and its impact on the citizens. [Full review in Spanish]
While this heartfelt dramedy is never less than engaging, Bollain and Laverty's conviction that idealistic youth can haul society back from the abyss sadly feels a touch naive.
