Reviewed by Justin Bateman
Stars Stephen Dillane, Rade Serbedzija, Rosamund Pike, Ayelet Zurer, Robbie Kay, Ed Stoppard, Rachelle Lefevre, Nina Dobrev Themis Bazaka, Diego Matamoros, Sarah Orenstein
Written by Jeremy Podeswa
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 104 minutes
Directed by Jeremy Podeswa
Poland, 1942. After witnessing his parents being killed by invading German troops and his older sister Bella (Dobrev) abducted, seven-year-old Jakob Beer (Kay) runs into the nearby woods to hide. The next day Jakob is found by archaeologist Athos Roussos (Serbedzija) who takes the traumatised boy to the relative safety of the Greek island Zakynthos, where Roussos lives. When the war ends, Roussos moves to Toronto to teach and with Jakob, begins a new life in Canada. But thirty years later and now a successful author, Jakob (as an adult played by Stephen Dillane) is still struggling to come to terms with the loss of his family and his own grieving.
Based on the award-winning Anne Michaels novel of the same name, Fugitive Pieces is being marketed as a film about ‘love, loss and liberation’. And there’s no denying that it does cover those topics, sensitively and thoughtfully. The problem is that it feels more like a film about loss, loss, loss, grieving, loss, grieving and finally, love. This isn’t to belittle the subject matter but the story is so relentlessly bleak that it makes enjoying the film a near impossibility. In that sense, the film is a success because Jakob is generally having a thoroughly miserable time, as you might expect, and as a viewer it’s almost impossible not to feel his pain.
The cast is excellent, with Robbie Kay as the young Jakob and Dillane as the adult version both displaying their emotional discomfort without histrionics, while Rade Serbedzija puts in a fine performance as Jakob’s kindly surrogate father. But although it’s beautifully shot – the sequences in the Mediterranean in particular are stunning – there is a lack of dramatic thrust which ultimately leaves the film short on momentum and crucially, tension. In fact, just about the only thing that kept me going was the hope that there must, surely, be some light at the end of what is a very dark tunnel indeed.
At times, Fugitive Pieces feels very literary which should perhaps come as no surprise given its source material. But while the film is by no means unsuccessful, it does at times feel like it ought to have stayed on the page, where inner turmoil and feelings of guilt and sorrow can often be better expressed and more readily conveyed.