Treasure

If you’re going to make a poignant film about the Holocaust, Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry is not the duo to assemble.

Though plenty charming in their own previous work, the combination of Dunham in hyper-depressed Hannah Horvath mode as 36-year-old divorcé Ruth alongside Fry as her Auschwitz-survivor, malapropism-spewing Polish father Edek, taking a trip together to his native land in 1991, consistently falls flat in all regards.

Not only does their banter sputter out time after time while Edek’s broken English grows increasingly exploitative, but the failed attempts at humor undermine the film’s would-be touching drama, such as a visit to Edek’s childhood apartment, where the scabs still live among his family’s belongings 31 years after the Jewish clan was forced out.

One has to think that the material works far better on the page in Lily Brett’s semi-autobiographical source novel, Too Many Men, but neither actor possesses the dramatic depth to pull off the generational trauma that co-writer/director Julia von Heinz (Hanna's Journey) strives to convey.

Such tonal disconnect in turn ruins any chance of emotional resonance when father and daughter inevitably visit the Nazi death camp where Edek lost his family, producing nearly the opposite reaction that the fact-based Holocaust drama Denial (2016) achieved when its characters stepped foot on that hallowed ground.

Following more scenes of Ruth and Edek being their caustic selves, Brett makes one last play for viewers’ hearts, and though these climactic moments come the closest to achieving the intended results, there are still too many of Treasure’s flaws present for them to work.

Grade: C-minus. Rated R. Now playing at the Fine Arts Theatre and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Bleecker Street)