MovieTime

Review

by Jason Di Rosso

Based on a novel by Canadian poet Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces is the story of a man haunted by childhood memories of his Polish Jewish family, taken away by the Nazis. He was saved by a Greek leftist academic and ends up, years later, in Canada, where he channels his survivor guilt into a career as an academic and writer, but finds his quest for love a rockier road.

Directed by Jeremy Podeswa who's made a lot of high-end TV, like Six Feet Under, this is a sumptuous looking film that flits seamlessly between wartime Europe and '70s Canada. How much you relate to this story of grief, or how much you are alienated by it, comes down a lot to the central performance. Stephen Dillane in the lead doesn't do this film any favours:—there's a lack of grit to his pallid performance. Still, there is a rich world to enjoy here: the conversations over cups of tea in the apartments of émigré Jewish families; the heady radicalism of Canadian intellectual life; the tough rural reality of the Greek island from the protagonist's childhood in exile. It's a universe worth exploring.

Director: Jeremy Podeswa
Cast: Stephen Dillane, Rade Serbedzija, Rosamund Pike, Ayelet Zurer, Robbie Kay, Ed Stoppard, Rachelle Lefevre
Producer: Robert Lantos
Script: Jeremy Podeswa (based on a novel by Anne Michaels)
Cinematographer: Gregory Middleton
Editor: Wiebke von Carolsfeld
Music: Nikos Kypourgos
Running time: 104
Australian distributor: Aztec
Language: English
Classification: MA15+