Treasure movie review

MOVIE TITLE: Treasure

This touching drama premieres at the Tribeca Premiere Film Festival on June 8^th, and then in theaters on June 14, 2024.

RATING: R

LENGTH: 1 hour 52 minutes

MOVIE REVIEW MOM GRADE: B

SPONSOR of Today’s movie review:

Too Many Men: A Novel by Lily Brett: https://amzn.to/3QqffT0

IN A NUTSHELL:

The film was inspired by a true story based on the book “Too Many Men” by Lily Brett. It was written and directed by Julia von Heinz.

THINGS I LIKED:

Stephen Fry is such a delightful actor. He was fantastic in this.
The title is perfect and refers to physical possessions, memories, and family relationships. Lovely. Ultimately, it’s a touching illustration that our most valuable treasure is our family and the people in our lives.
My husband has Polish ancestors, so I was interested to learn about the country and culture portrayed in the film. The film takes place in 1991 Warsaw.
It was interesting to see that people were expected to pay money for a tiny bit of toilet paper handed to them by an attendant in a public restroom.
We get to see the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. When people refer to it as a museum, Lena Dunham’s character corrects them by saying it was a death camp. I haven’t been to Auschwitz, but I did go to the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany many years ago. I’ll never forget it. The sobering feelings I experienced there still haunt me. How utterly devastating.
The ending was very touching.
We get to see photos of the real people the movie is based on at the very end. I always appreciate that and wish we could have seen more.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

A lot of Polish is spoken without subtitles. The good news is that there are subtitles more often than not. It’s fun to hear Polish spoken.
Lena Dunham’s character is super cranky and judgmental. I’ve heard she’s like that in real life too. I was surprised at how wooden some of her lines were delivered. I would have preferred to see more video of Poland than scenes with a naked Lena Dunham in them.
There are quite a few scenes where we see Lena Dunham’s character smoking, giving herself a tattoo, obsessing over food, etc., revealing how neurotic she is but it seemed like an unnecessary distraction from the respect that was owed to the sites visited in Warsaw. If they were supposed to provide the comic relief to balance out the heavy drama, they didn’t.
The movie poster is super vague and doesn’t prepare you at all for the content of the film.
It is very slow-moving. Several scenes could have easily been cut to shorten the film length.
The film is described as a comedy, but it offers far more heavy drama than humor.