Jakob Beer is only a boy when the Nazis come for his parents and sister. He escapes from Poland when a Greek archeologist (Sherbedgia) becomes his unlikely saviour and adoptive father. Holed up together on a paradisiacal island, they ride out the war but their bond never gets any easier. The boy Jakob, like his grown-up equivalent (Stephen Dillane) provides testament that you can take the boy out of the ghetto, but you cannot take the ghetto out of the boy.
Stockpiling the terrible things he has seen, obsessing over the fate of his sister, Jakob lives among the dead not the living. His academic career provides a context to stoke his painful preoccupations and drive away those, such as first wife, Rosmund Pike, who would seek to get close to him.
As an emotional essay, Fugitive Pieces backs up its argument with flashbacks and solemnly purple voiceover. Mr. Dillane, all silent wounds and brooding, does sterling work as the lead.
Still, this gorgeous, lush picture never really earns its stripes as a holocaust film. Like The Reader, Fugitive Pieces avoids the messier aspects of that historical tragedy, in favour of cutesy-pie kids, breathtaking scenery, eye-wateringly cheesy sex scenes and completely inauthentic period detail. You’ll wonder where the characters’ iPods have gone.
For all its angst, for all Mr. Podeswa’s flair, Fugitive Pieces is simply too pretty, too posturing to be a holocaust film. File alongside Good and The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas as non-essential.