During World War II, a Jewish Polish boy named Jakob, after seeing his family slaughtered, is rescued by a Greek archeologist; the pair ride out the war in a remote corner of Greece, and eventually relocate to the safety of Canada and academia. But the grown Jakob (Stephen Dillane) struggles emotionally to embrace life and bury his demons. Jeremy Podeswa's lyrical drama, which shifts between the past and present in a vaguely dreamlike manner, flutters over familiar ground to an affirming and sentimental conclusion. It's not news to us that surviving a horror can seem worse than succumbing to it, but the handling is sensitive, grounded in low-key performances from Dillane, Robbie Kay as young Jakob and Rade Serbedzija as the Greek rescuer. If you're looking for an alternative to the bombast and comic vulgarity of the season's films, Pieces provides a quiet, if teary, drama about real-life sorrows. In English, and Greek, Yiddish and German, with subtitles. Manor (AH)
