Treasure movie review: Lena Dunham inhabits the intersection between private grief, public sorrow

If that is the public sorrow part, apparent in the guarded, tentative approach of its natives towards foreigners who have come looking for something the country would rather put behind, Ruth (Lena) and father Edek (Fry) collide with it carrying their own private griefs.

A recent divorcee struggling with her weight and self-esteem, Ruth has decided that what she needs is this visit to Poland, from where her Jewish parents fled to America, after surviving the Auschwitz death camp. Edek has never told her much, and she seeks in the trip a meaning both for herself and the two of them.

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Edek is not too keen, but has too many dark memories of the place, which he shows only in dribbles, to let Ruth go alone. “Do you know what can happen in Poland?” is his one refrain.

Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Lily Brett, Treasure is either trying too hard to show how horror of this kind can alter one’s world forever, or not trying hard enough — in an inexplicable amount of unsubtitled Polish. Dunham and Fry successfully convey a lifetime lived together, in love and a growing exasperation, but there is no hint of that unspeakable tragedy which marks this father-daughter relationship.

In her most serious role yet, Dunham is particularly good in conveying the many different emotions that hide within her shabby frame, which she wears as both a shield and a badge. She is 36 with a journalism career that may or may not be going too well, looking half-way round the world for something that she herself isn’t sure of.

Fry is less sure of what he is supposed to do with his role of Edek, once it has been established that he is reluctant to go over painful memories even while pretending that he couldn’t care less.

Polish actor Zbigniew Zamachowski, of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy fame, plays the taxi driver Stephan who ferries Edek and Ruth around, after a wary Edek can’t get himself to board a train, given all that it implies for a Jew in Poland. It’s not much of a role, but Stephan’s moral clarity is the soothing touch of this film.

Treasure movie cast: Lena Dunham, Stephen Fry, Zbigniew Zamachowski
Treasure movie director: Julia von Heinz
Treasure movie rating: 2.5 stars