Under the Fig Trees

Set over the course of a summer’s work­ing day in a fig orchard in rur­al Tunisia, Erige Sehiri’s pas­toral fic­tion debut fol­lows a group of sea­son­al labour­ers in a par­adise they have made but do not own. As with Car­la Simon’s Alcar­ràs, the sto­ry at the cen­tre of Under the Fig Trees is set on the sup­ply end of the glob­al con­sump­tion chain, and focus­es on a micro­cosm of small yet sig­nif­i­cant moments of beau­ty and trep­i­da­tion exchanged amongst an ensem­ble of fruit harvesters.

For the young­sters, a long day of work at the orchard entails climb­ing trees and locat­ing ripe figs, whilst the old­er women sit under the shade, care­ful­ly pack­ing the pro­duce into crates. Figs are a tough crop to har­vest, and the process is a del­i­cate and tricky one, for the branch of a fig tree is more frag­ile than one would assume. To reach the fruit, the branch­es must be tugged gen­tly to ensure that they don’t snap.

The French-Tunisian film­mak­er brings a gen­tle, free-flow­ing nat­u­ral­ism to a tale about sum­mer flir­ta­tions, chance encoun­ters, pet­ty crime and bud­ding wom­an­hood, trad­ing the airy open­ness of wide shots for the con­fine­ment of hand-held medi­um shots and tight close-ups of her ensem­ble cast of non-pro­fes­sion­al actors. Organ­ic chem­istry buoys their unguard­ed inter­ac­tions, and the shade under the dense­ly plant­ed, sun-dap­pled trees pro­vides a ripe back­drop for casu­al flirt­ing to take place away from the strict con­fines and pry­ing eyes of the youth’s vil­lages. Courtship rit­u­als play out as two ex-lovers who had been sep­a­rat­ed for years ten­ta­tive­ly recon­nect amidst the trees. Anoth­er woman tries to con­nect with her para­mour as they plan their next meet­ing to take place at a super­mar­ket yoghurt aisle.

When we first meet Fidé, arguably the most head-strong, pro­gres­sive woman of the bunch, she is in the pas­sen­ger seat of the vehi­cle that trans­ports the work­ers to the orchard. The fact that she has a seat in the truck, as opposed to stand­ing in the car­go bed with the rest of the work­ers, is a sub­ject of gos­sip alone. Fidé knows that the boss’ atten­tions are not moti­vat­ed by pro­fes­sion­al­ism. She’s well aware that he plucks the girls as if they were his fruit, and when mat­ters like sex­u­al harass­ment are brought to the fore, Sehiri’s sug­ges­tive, rather than explic­it approach, is as sharp a denounce­ment of patri­ar­chal vio­lence as any.

Though the young women make up the major­i­ty of the work­force, their dynam­ic and rap­port with the men and few elder­ly women add an intrigu­ing tex­ture to the film’s delin­eation of a con­tem­po­rary Tunisian por­trait. While the young bick­er, gos­sip, fight, and dis­cuss rela­tion­ships and aspi­ra­tions, the inter­ac­tions between the old­er women are either lim­it­ed to their ail­ments, or sim­ply marked by silence.

There’s no rev­el­ling in reduc­tive ​“tra­di­tion vs moder­ni­ty” fod­der to explore how these young Tunisian women are nav­i­gat­ing their bur­geon­ing sex­u­al­i­ties against such com­plex socio-cul­tur­al anx­i­eties. Sehiri’s inti­mate focus, espe­cial­ly in the film’s clos­ing sequence, allows the film to bloom into a warm and ten­der embrace of the under­ly­ing sis­ter­hood and cama­raderie between a coterie of young women that refuse to be seen as a monolith.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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