Every so often there’s a news story in which neighbours quarrel over rampaging leylandii. The police are summoned, the case reaches the court, and whole lives are consumed by inextinguishable hatred. These nuclear tiffs are a Middle England staple. A boundary dispute is a border dispute writ small. Other European nations have watched their negotiable frontiers move around like a boundary rope on a cricket pitch. Surrounded by sea, we don’t have that in our DNA. And maybe Icelanders don’t either.
Under the Tree is a social comedy from Iceland in which the eponymous tree sits in the more southerly of two abutting gardens. The shade it casts thwarts the sun worship of Eybjorg (Selma Bjornsdottir). Hang on, sunbathing in Iceland? But let that pass: this is not a finicky film hung up on plausibility.
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