The problems with Treasure begin when Stephen Fry opens his lavishly bearded mouth, moments after the film’s start. Out booms that familiar, Garricky voice, only it’s laden with a Polish accent so thick he could be playing a Bond villain. Fry proceeds to explain to a waiting Lena Dunham what caused him to miss his flight to Warsaw – “I went to McDonald’s for the hunger”.
He then more usefully tells her (and us) the kind of film we’re in for: “This is special daughter-father trip.” Based on the novel by the Australian writer Lily Brett, and inspired by real events, Treasure conspires to be both a family road trip movie, featuring the usual bonding, score-settling and japes, and an exploration of the traumatic legacy of the Holocaust. (It is co-produced by Dunham, who recently learned she has relatives who died in the Holocaust.
) It fulfils neither brief particularly well, but nor does it do such a bad job the film could fairly be described as an embarrassment for those involved. The year is 1991. Dunham plays Ruth, a 36-year-old journalist from New York whose life has fallen apart after the death of her mother.
She has left her husband (we’re told he’s very good looking), and organised a trip, in time-honoured American fashion, to reconnect with her European roots. Along for the ride is her father Edek (Fry), who, we learn, was sent to Auschwitz with his family as a young man, and was the only one to survive. He has spent the past 40 years in America, avo.
