Treasure, Berlin Film Festival assessment: Stephen Fry and Lena Dunham make for a fun if unlikely double act

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Treasure, a light character-based drama starring Stephen Fry and Lena Dunham, addresses the Holocaust very otherwise to different current movies, amongst them Jonathan Glazer’s stark and terrifying The Zone of Interest or Bianca Stigter’s equally disturbing archive-based Three Minutes – A Lengthening. The movie, tailored from Lily Bret’s novel and a world premiere on the Berlin Festival this weekend, makes use of whimsy and anecdote as an alternative of shock techniques. At occasions, it performs extra like a sitcom than a story about the legacy of the demise camps. Thankfully, it nonetheless offers probing perception into all the things from informal antisemitism to the plague of historic forgetfulness.

Fry and Dunham play father and daughter Edek and Ruth who, in 1991, journey from New York to Poland to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He is a Polish survivor of the camps. She is a journalist determined to search out out about her previous.

It takes a few moments to get used to Fry’s heavy japanese European accent, however the British actor offers a charming and transferring efficiency. His Edek is a white-whiskered and eccentric determine, frequently cracking jokes and tipping the Polish resort employees extravagantly. We can see the prisoner quantity on his arm however he steadfastly refuses to debate what he skilled. Nor does he appear to point out a lot curiosity in revisiting the haunts of his youth, for occasion the house he was taken from when he and his household have been despatched to Auschwitz. His spouse lately died however he gained’t speak about her, both. Nor will he acknowledge his Jewish roots.

Ruth, in the meantime, is a music journalist. Her father, who embarrasses her by calling her “pumpkin,” is inordinately happy with the actual fact she as soon as interviewed the Rolling Stones. She’s waspish and witty but in addition a clearly sad determine who eats an excessive amount of junk meals and remains to be getting over the break-up of her most up-to-date relationship.

Dunham and Fry have an efficient comedian rapport. She frequently rolls her eyes at his dad jokes and idiosyncratic use of English. He embarrasses her by speaking frankly about intercourse and exasperates her by by no means sticking to her plans. They make an interesting odd couple, with Dunham because the grumpy Walter Matthau-type to Fry’s ever optimistic Jack Lemmon.

German director Julia von Heinz does a good job of evoking early Nineties, post-communist Poland in all its greys and monotony. At occasions, the story dangers stalling. Like its two lead characters, it merely doesn’t appear to know the place it’s going. Father and daughter drift round Poland at the back of a taxi with a very accommodating driver. Edek doesn’t need to journey by prepare – however not for the explanations we first suspect. Late on, the pair lastly go to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Given that they whizz round on a caddy automotive, these scenes may simply have appeared crass and insensitive. Instead, they’re surprisingly tender.

Treasure is prone to be much more accessible to a basic viewers than extra forbidding Holocaust films. It skirts near mawkishness at occasions – and a few of the character-based comedy feels a little compelled – however remains to be likeable and partaking, usually coping with very darkish subject material in a sure-footed method.

Dir: Julia von Heinz. Starring: Stephen Fry, Lena Dunham, Zbigniew Zamachowski. 112 minutes.

‘Treasure’ screens on the Berlin Film Festival from right now till 22 February, and is awaiting a UK launch

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