Fugitive Pieces

NEW YORK (CNS) -- The traumatic effects of the Holocaust are dramatized in low-key but affecting fashion in "Fugitive Pieces" (Samuel Goldwyn).

This quietly reflective story concerns a 9-year-old Jewish boy, Jakob (Robbie Kay), in Poland, separated from his family during the occupation. While he is hidden away in a cupboard, the Nazis burst in, presumably kill his parents and take away his beloved sister, Bella (Nina Dobrev), to a fate we never learn.

He's found cowering in the woods by Athos Roussos (Rade Sherbedgia), a gentle Greek archaeologist who smuggles the boy back to his sun-drenched island in Nazi-occupied Greece, slowly winning the boy's confidence and trust. Eventually, they emigrate to Canada when Athos secures a teaching position.

The film shuttles back and forth in time, sometimes a bit confusingly, and shows how the events of Jakob's traumatic early years mold his adulthood as a writer (where he's played most excellently by Stephen Dillane) and his relationships: the two sympathetic women in his life, Alex (Rosamund Pike), with whom he feels little connection, and later Michaela (Ayelet Zurer), with whom he does, and Ben (Ed Stoppard), the son of his Holocaust survivor neighbors, who looks up to him.

Directed with a measured -- albeit occasionally sluggish -- pace by Jeremy Podeswa, who also wrote the adaptation of Anne Michaels' 1996 best-selling novel, the film is especially touching in the tender scenes with Sherbedgia and young Kay who morphs convincingly into Dillane. The latter beautifully conveys how his character eventually comes to terms with the ghosts and guilt of the past.

The film contains some nonmarital sexuality with partial and rear nudity, a shooting death, and other brief nongraphic violence, a suicide reference and a couple of mild expletives. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops