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    ‘Treasure’ Review: Unearthing the Past

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    Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry star in a Holocaust-memory drama that uneasily doubles as a father-daughter road movie.Along with Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain,” scheduled for release this fall, Julia von Heinz’s “Treasure” is one of at least two dramas this year to follow the American descendants of Holocaust survivors on travels across Poland. Von Heinz’s film is based on a novel by the Australia-raised author Lily Brett, herself the daughter of survivors. But whatever complexities might come across in the book don’t register in a film that has been fashioned, sometimes uneasily, into a sentimental father-daughter road movie.It is 1991, and Ruth (Lena Dunham, asked to do the most serious acting of her career), a journalist, has planned a trip to Poland. Her father, Edek (Stephen Fry), who, along with Ruth’s mother, survived Auschwitz, has insisted on joining her. He says he couldn’t let his daughter visit Poland alone.Initially, “Treasure” presents Edek as a goofy lug, jocular and uninhibited. But his carefree attitude masks repressed trauma, to an extent that Fry never manages to make visceral. Unnerved by train travel, Edek hires a driver (Zbigniew Zamachowski, from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “White”) to take them from site to site. “Treasure” builds to their trip to Auschwitz, where Edek quickly takes over from the tour guide with an outpouring of memories.The crux of the film involves their visits to the Lodz apartment from which Edek and his family were exiled in 1940. Ruth wants to reclaim what was stolen from her family; Edek has a learned fear of not moving on from the past. Their difference in outlooks is a potentially powerful subject, but miscasting has blunted its impact.TreasureRated R. Intense descriptions of survival in Auschwitz. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Laurie Simmons and Lena Dunham Argue About Earrings, Not Art

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      Laurie Simmons: My father was a first-generation American small-town dentist on Long Island with an office off our kitchen and a darkroom in the basement; I’d sit at his feet as he developed his dental X-rays. I see his work ethic in you — you’re relentless in your desire to keep making things — but I’d like to think that came from me, too.Lena Dunham: Well, it did. I’ve seen you go into your studio and come out 12 hours later in the same outfit looking confused, like you don’t know when you went in. Growing up, I spent a lot of time in that space. My favorite thing to do was to look through the loupe at slides on the light box. And then you’d take the red pen and X out the ones that weren’t good.L.S.: I can’t believe you remember that.culture banner More

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      ‘Catherine Called Birdy’ Review: Ye Olde Lady Bird

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      Bella Ramsey plays a 13th century adolescent in Lena Dunham’s winning film.To flip through the pages of a 13th century manuscript, one might believe the medieval era was beleaguered by more snaky dragons and man-murdering bunnies than temperamental tween girls. Young women’s stories weren’t recorded — certainly not in their own hand, as literacy was low and paper costs were high — an absence that has prodded later generations to imagine the adolescent of the Middle Ages as demure and obedient, neither seen nor heard. Here comes “Catherine Called Birdy,” a headstrong comedy written for the screen and directed by Lena Dunham, to fill in that silence with a shriek.Birdy, played with zest by Bella Ramsey, storms into the frame baring her teeth and flinging mud pies. The 14-year-old daughter of a broke lord (Andrew Scott) and his oft-bedridden wife (Billie Piper), Birdy is mercurial, mulish and emphatically irritated by nearly everyone and everything in her shire. She logs her grievances in her diary, which riffs from Karen Kushman’s 1994 Newbery Medal-winning children’s novel. The film drops Kushman’s unromantic runner about pestilence (“Picked off 29 fleas today,” her Birdy writes) to focus on the girl’s passion for inventing curses (“Corpus bones!”) and her campaign to scuttle her father’s intention to save his estate by marrying his only surviving daughter to a flatulent creep she dubs Shaggy Beard (Paul Kaye).Husbands, as seen here, are either too old (81!), too young (9!) or too selfish, in the case of Scott’s repugnantly weak Lord Rollo, who wasted the family money importing tigers and silken robes he wears open-chested with beads, as if presaging Lord Byron’s fashion sense six centuries sooner. No wonder the girl would prefer to suffer a saint’s gruesome tortures than live on as one more forsaken wife.Dunham sets out to make life in 1290 feel as vibrant as if Birdy was rocking the glitter eye shadow of “Euphoria” instead of drawstring underpants. Occasionally, the movie overplays its bid for modern relevance — it’s dubious that a medieval teen would be able to come out as gay with just a knowing look — and the soundtrack’s twee covers of girl power anthems are a warble too far. (No need to perform Elastica’s “Connection” on what sounds like a lute.) But Dunham prevails in convincing audiences that coming-of-age in a so-called simpler time was equally tumultuous, and crams the corners of her movie with images of other female characters discreetly seizing their own moments of satisfaction — glimpses of joys which realize that it’s in the margins of a medieval tale where the best stuff happens.Catherine Called BirdyRated PG-13 for adult innuendo. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Sharp Stick’ Review: The Babysitter’s Schlubs

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      Lena Dunham’s new movie follows a 26-year-old who methodically gains sexual experience after having an uncomfortable affair.Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), the mythical seductress at the center of “Sharp Stick,” an uneven, uneasy fable of desire by the writer, director and performer Lena Dunham, is the kind of erotic nymph who exists only in Penthouse letters and vintage soft-core movies. A babysitter long of hair and limb but short on emotional demands, Sarah Jo ventures through modern day Los Angeles in modest floral pinafores, which she lifts above her waist in invitation. No need for conversation or dinner — she only appears to eat plain yogurt, anyway.The strong first half of “Sharp Stick” places Sarah Jo in competition with Heather (played by Dunham), a harried, heavily pregnant real estate agent. Heather relies on Sarah Jo’s expertise to look after her son, Zach (Liam Michel Saux), who has Down syndrome. But Zach’s slacker father, Josh (Jon Bernthal), is usually floating around the house, too, and the ne’er-do-well suffers only a twinge of guilt as he seizes the chance to recast himself as a romantic hero to Sarah Jo. It’s not much of a fight — and Josh isn’t much of a catch — but one of Dunham’s talents is her ability to capture the allure of heartbreakers, scuzzballs and dopes. At home, Sarah Jo’s mother, Marilyn (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a former music video starlet who has torn through five marriages, and older sister, Treina (Taylour Paige), a boy-crazy aspiring influencer, chatter constantly (and hilariously) about girth size and titillation tips. Steeped in their dubious advice, Sarah Jo, a 26-year-old virgin at the start of the film, sets out to gain her own life experience with men. Aside from Josh, she doesn’t seem to know any — her father, whom Marilyn dismisses as a dumbbell, isn’t around — and she quickly discovers that she has a lot to learn, including that the names of certain sex acts aren’t literal. The impossibility of these two tigresses raising this lamb is Dunham’s clue that she’s operating in allegory: This film is her test to see whether the world is any kinder to a hetero male fantasy like Sarah Jo than it is to the kind of messy, cranky, needy women that Dunham has made her career putting onscreen.Sarah Jo’s early affair with Josh leads to a garbled, meandering stretch where she works her way through an alphabetical checklist of carnal escapades with a revolving door of men. As Froseth bravely flings herself into vulnerable scenarios, the film is careful to keep the focus on her character’s pleasure (or the lack of it). A montage of flings is shot with all the sizzle of a Slurpee commercial. These scenes are too humorless for satire and too artificial to support the film’s eventual, deluded attempt to shift into a somewhat sincere coming-of-age tale. (The gentle pop soundtrack and Ashley Connor’s naturalistic cinematography seem to think that this has been that kind of movie from the beginning.) By that point, the naif’s misadventures simply feel like an argument to not take sex so seriously. Watching Sarah Jo’s repeated hallucinations of a cartoon woman mating and giving birth, one can imagine Dunham whispering to the audience that moments of awkward, sloppy intimacy aren’t shameful — they’re the foundation of human existence.Sharp StickRated R for sexual situations, including one under the influence of psychedelics. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Who Is Luis Felber? An Interview With Lena Dunham's Husband

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      Luis Felber and Lena Dunham are in love. The pair has made no secret of this fact on their Instagram accounts in recent months. And now they are married.Asked when he knew he wanted to marry Ms. Dunham, Mr. Felber responded on Monday via email: “There were lots of moments, there are lots of moments and there will be lots of moments. I’m not living in a Disney film where you’re certain about who you want to spend the rest of your life with in one moment. Time is fluid and when you know, you know. I love my wife, who is also my best friend.”So who is Luis Felber?Born in Winchester, England, to a Peruvian mother and a British father, Mr. Felber spent his earliest years in Peru and Chile before moving back to Britain at age 7. At 17, he skipped university and began pursuing a career in music, playing guitar with several different bands.Recently, Mr. Felber, 35, has been recording and performing under the name Attawalpa (his middle name, after the 16th-century Incan ruler Atahualpa). On Oct. 13, he’ll release a new single, “Peter Gabriel’s Dream.”Below is an interview, edited for clarity, conducted with Mr. Felber over Zoom in early September.So how did you and Lena meet?It was a blind date. A mutual friend of ours basically set us up. The first time we hung out, we didn’t stop talking for, like, eight hours.Where did you go?Just around central London because everything was shut down.So you’re walking along the streets, along the Thames?Yeah and I think it was sort of incredible, you know, I walked into that. I’d been on quite a few dates in the past year. As someone who’s quite open, I find you hold a lot back on your first three dates. Or first 10 dates. I was just a bit fed up with that, so I just walked into the situation very myself, shall I say. And Lena liked that. And she’s the same.“I’m still getting used to being shown that sort of love by someone else,” Mr. Felber said of his relationship with Ms. Dunham.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesIs it fair to say that your relationship seemed to get really intense really quickly? Or is that just our impression via Instagram?Yeah, I mean, describe “intense.”It feels like you’re both very passionate about each other, that you’re both very much in love, and that it happened very quickly.I think when you know, you know. I’ve only been alive for 35 years in this lifetime, and I think it’s another archaic thing for guys to hide their feelings. I’m way more into the flow of getting to know the person. And I think Lena’s the same, and I think — I’m going to sound cheesy — but when you find your soul mate, you just know.She’s very open about you on Instagram. How does that make you feel?It’s very moving. I’m still getting used to being shown that sort of love by someone else. I’ve never shut her down, or anyone down for that. It’s beautiful that she expresses herself and I love being on the other end of it.How do you like living together?It’s great, we’ve been living together for about four months now. We both work a lot, and every morning is a blessing. And every evening, to be able to go to bed with your best friend and chat — we find it hard to go to sleep at a decent hour. It’s rarely eight hours.What kind of dates do you go on now?Oh my. She comes to my gigs. Neither of us really drink, but we go for long walks on the Heath, we see friends, we watch movies, we just watched the whole of “BoJack Horseman.” I could be sitting at a bus stop with her for 10 hours and it would be the best day ever.How do your parents like Lena?They love her. My mum’s very shy, and she kind of builds barriers. It’s a protection thing, I think from leaving a country when you’re very young, not knowing the language. I think maybe it’s a barrier she’s had from childhood. I can kind of relate to that. But with Lena she was just, like, best friends. She was very open about her emotions and they just love each other. My dad as well.That’s the thing: Both me and Lena’s parents are still together, and I think that’s a great example.Lena’s parents are artists: Her mother is the photographer Laurie Simmons and her father is the painter Carroll Dunham. Your mother is the painter Alma Laura. Would you say you and Lena are similar?I think we’ve got the same references. We were born in the same year, under a month apart, I think we have the same sense of humor. I don’t know if we’re similar. Lena would be able to answer that more.Do you have any of your mother’s work in your home?We’ve got a few paintings of hers. They make me feel really calm.A portrait of Mr. Felber and Ms. Dunham hangs in the couple’s home. It was painted by Mr. Felber’s mother, Alma Laura. “They make me feel really calm,” he said of his mother’s paintings.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesLena directed the video for your song “Tucked In Tight,” a love song about your phone. What was it like working with her?It’s the best — I love being directed by her. It’s like our relationship, it just sort of flows. We don’t have any arguments. She’s obviously very good at what she does.Had you heard of Lena before you started dating or had you seen her work?No. Mum was a fan of “Girls.” I remember when I was touring in my 20s, my mum and my sister were watching that show. But I never watched it.Have you seen it now?I haven’t. But I’ve watched her current stuff. I watched “Industry” when we first started dating, and I scored her next film, “Sharp Stick,” which is out next year. It’s a really beautiful film.When you’re an artist, you’re living in the present, into the future. You’re looking for the next thing. Looking back is a thing we shouldn’t really do too much, to be able to move forward with ease.But I will watch “Girls” one day, to answer your question. I can see what an impact it’s had on people. I was at lunch with some old school friends and my friend’s sister was really excited about Lena. I asked, “What did ‘Girls’ make you feel?” She said, “I feel like it gave me a voice,” and that’s amazing. What a beautiful thing to hear about your partner.How would you describe your musical style to someone who hasn’t heard it before?If I’m feeling lazy, I say “alternative.” If I’m feeling cocky, I’ll say it’s between Prince and Nirvana.You’ve worked as a musician for much of your adult life. How did the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle suit you?I basically toured a lot in my 20s, playing guitar for different bands. When you’re on tour, you are basically given whatever you want. Alcohol and weed were my main methods of numbing. In the U.K., alcohol is considered a normal thing to do on the weekends. But if your job entails playing every night, you are given alcohol every night. It’s almost like part of your job.I wouldn’t say I’m sober, but I haven’t had a drink since November. I just drink when I feel like it. I call it “conscious drinking.” I never did A.A., but I started therapy in 2017. Therapists would be like, you need to stop drinking so you can hear your thoughts, and I’d be like, no. That went on for about six months. And then I did a session of five-element acupuncture, and I stopped drinking for about a year.It’s kind of romanticized, isn’t it — musicians and alcohol.Yeah, in my opinion, I think that’s a way of controlling musicians. Most musicians aren’t in charge of their business, aren’t in charge of their money or even the way they look or the way they’re perceived. So it’s just really easy to fall into that trap and be numb to everything and expect your manager to deal with things.For me, the most punk rock thing is to be conscious. Since I’ve been conscious, I’ve managed to put out loads of music and be more open to who I am. More

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      It’s Hollywood Barbie’s Moment (and She’s Bringing Her Friends)

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      For 62 years, Barbie has been the hardest-working woman in the toy aisle, using a dizzying array of outfits and accessories — and, lately, changing body shapes and skin tones — while gliding from one career to the next. Astrophysicist Barbie. Ballerina Barbie. Chicken Farmer Barbie. Firefighter Barbie.But she has never pulled off the ultimate transformation: Barbie, live-action movie star.Time and again, her corporate overlords at Mattel have teamed with Hollywood studios to make a big-budget film in hopes of forging a new revenue stream while giving Barbie new relevance. Time and again, nothing has emerged, in part because Mattel has tried to micromanage the creative process, alienating filmmakers. (You want Barbie to do what?) Financial turbulence and executive turnover at Mattel haven’t helped.A similar situation has played out with other Mattel brands, including Hot Wheels, American Girl and Masters of the Universe — a humiliation given the success that other toy companies have had in Hollywood, which loves nothing more than a movie concept with a built-in fan base.The inventive “Lego Movie” took in nearly $500 million at the global box office in 2014 for Warner Bros. and the Lego Group, resulting in a sequel and two spinoffs. Paramount Pictures and Hasbro have turned the Transformers action-figure line into a $5 billion big-screen franchise over the last 14 years; a seventh installment is on the way and will undoubtedly deliver the same halo for Hasbro as the previous films, driving up the company’s stock price and turbocharging demand for Transformers toys.With money like that on the line, Mattel has clung to its Hollywood dream. “There is ‘Fast and Furious 9’ and Hot Wheels zero,” said Ynon Kreiz, Mattel’s newish chief executive, referring to Universal’s hot-rod film franchise, which has taken in $6.3 billion worldwide since 2001. “That is going to change.”There are signals — 13 of them — that Mattel is not playing around this time.Margot Robbie will star in “Barbie,” a live-action movie directed by Greta Gerwig.Pool photo by Chris PizzelloUnder Mr. Kreiz, who has overseen a stunning financial turnaround at the company since becoming its fourth chief executive in four years in 2018, Mattel has moved to turn its toys into full-fledged entertainment brands. It now has 13 films in the works with various studio partners, including “Barbie,” a live-action adventure starring Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”) and directed by the Oscar-nominated Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”). Ms. Robbie, who is also one of the producers, described the big-budget film in an email as being “for both the fans and the skeptics,” a theatrical endeavor that will be “really entertaining but also completely surprising.”The script, by Ms. Gerwig and Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story”), even pokes fun at Barbie and Ken, her plastic paramour.As in, what happened to their genitals?“I’m excited about this movie because it’s emotional and touches your heart and honors the legacy while reflecting our current society and culture — and doesn’t feel designed to sell toys,” said Toby Emmerich, chairman of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group, where “Barbie” is pointed toward a 2023 theatrical release.The dozen other films in Mattel’s pipeline include a live-action Hot Wheels spectacle; a horror film based on the fortunetelling Magic 8 Ball; a wide-audience Thomas the Tank Engine movie that combines animation and live action; and, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, a big-screen Masters of the Universe adventure about the cosmos that includes He-Man and his superheroic sister, She-Ra.Mattel also has 17 television series in production, including “Masters of the Universe: Revelation,” which arrives on Netflix on July 23.NetflixMattel, Universal and Vin Diesel are collaborating on a live-action movie based on Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, a tabletop game introduced in 1966. Lena Dunham (HBO’s “Girls”) is directing and writing a live-action family comedy based on Mattel’s Polly Pocket line of micro-dolls. Lily Collins (“Emily in Paris”) will play the title role and produce; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is the distribution and financing partner.“Young women need smart, playful films that speak to them without condescension,” Ms. Dunham said.Mattel has also announced movies based on View-Master, American Girl and Uno, the ubiquitous card game. (If you think an Uno movie sounds like a satirical headline from The Onion, consider this: There are non-Mattel movies in development in Hollywood that are based on Play-Doh and Peeps, the Easter candy.)All or some or none of Mattel’s movie projects could connect with audiences — if they come to fruition at all. That is the nature of the Hollywood casino.“Familiarity with a toy or character is a start, but no movie makes it without clever character and story development,” said David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a movie consultancy.Toys have a surprisingly strong track record as film fodder. Other hits include the 2016 animated musical “Trolls,” based on the wild-haired dolls, and “Ouija,” which cost $5 million to make in 2014 and collected $104 million worldwide. (Pixar did not base “Toy Story” on a toy, but it has populated the franchise with classics, including Barbie.) But the genre has also had wipeouts, notably “Battleship,” which Universal and Hasbro based on the board game and cost more than $300 million to make and market. It arrived to $25 million in North American ticket sales in 2012.The head of Mattel Films, Robbie Brenner, right, with Mr. Kreiz and Richard Dickson, Mattel’s president and chief operating officer.Rozette Rago for The New York Times“UglyDolls,” adapted from a line of plush toys, was a smaller-scale box office disaster for STX Films in 2019. Mattel itself got bruised in 2016 when “Max Steel,” a modestly budgeted film based on an action figure, arrived to near-empty theaters. It received a zero percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes, the review-aggregation site.“Unless you can make something that feels really sticky and really interesting and really authentic, there’s no point in doing it,” said Robbie Brenner, who heads Mattel Films, which was created in 2018. (Mattel’s previous movie division, Playground Productions, was started in 2013 and folded in 2016.)Ms. Brenner said she had approached all of Mattel’s properties with the same question: “How do we flip it on its side a little bit while still respecting the integrity of the brand?”Mr. Kreiz said he was not interested in making thinly disguised toy commercials. In a shift from the Mattel of the past, “we want to give our filmmaking partners creative freedom and enable them to do things that are unconventional and exciting,” he said. “Focus on making great content and the rest will follow.”He added, however, that Mattel did not “sign a deal and disappear.”The message appears to be resonating in Hollywood, allowing Mattel to attract A-plus talent. The “Barbie” team is one example. Tom Hanks has agreed to star in and produce an adaptation of Major Matt Mason, an astronaut action figure introduced by Mattel in 1966; Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar-winning writer of “A Beautiful Mind,” is working on the screenplay. Marc Forster (“World War Z”) is directing and producing that “Thomas & Friends” movie. And Daniel Kaluuya, who won an Oscar in April for his role in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” is involved with a Mattel film project based on Barney, the interminably perky purple dinosaur.Even Ms. Brenner has a sophisticated film pedigree. She produced the AIDS-medication drama “Dallas Buyers Club,” which received six Oscar nominations in 2014, including one for best picture. (It won three: actor, supporting actor, and makeup and hairstyling.) Before that, she was a senior executive at 20th Century Fox and Miramax.“Barbie DreamHouse Adventures” is already steaming on Netflix.MattelMattel’s momentum in Hollywood has resulted, in part, from a turnaround at the company as a whole. Mattel has fixed many of its core problems, making it less risk averse, according to Richard Dickson, Mattel’s president and chief operating officer.“Five years ago, the foundations that our brands were sitting on were not strong enough,” Mr. Dickson said.When Mr. Kreiz arrived in April 2018, the toymaker was reeling from gut punches, some self-inflicted. It had lost Disney’s lucrative princesses toy license to Hasbro. A crucial retail partner, Toys “R” Us, had evaporated in a cloud of bankruptcy. Millennial parents had turned on Barbie, dismissing her as vapid and noninclusive. And some of Mattel’s other stars — American Girl, the glam Monster High crew — were adrift, unsure of how to compete for the attention of a generation of iPad-wielding children.Total revenue plunged to $4.5 billion in 2018, from $6.5 billion in 2013, and a profit of more than $900 million in 2013 became a loss of $533 million.Mr. Kreiz stabilized Mattel by restructuring its supply chain and reducing costs by $1 billion over three years, in part by closing factories and laying off more than 2,000 nonmanufacturing employees. At the same time, a long-gestating modernization plan for Barbie began to pay off in a major way. She now comes with roughly 150 different body shapes, skin tones and hairstyles; Wheelchair Barbie was such a runaway success last year that Wheelchair Ken recently arrived.In 2020, with parents looking for ways to entertain children at home during the pandemic, Mattel sold more than 100 Barbie dolls a minute, Mr. Dickson said. (Juli Lennett, toy industry adviser for NPD Group, backed him up.)Revenue totaled $4.6 billion last year, and Mattel posted a profit of $127 million. In the first quarter of 2021, sales increased 47 percent from a year earlier, the company’s highest growth rate in at least 25 years. Mattel’s stock price has climbed 52 percent since Mr. Kreiz took over.Mattel, based in El Segundo, Calif., is now turning to the next phase of Mr. Kreiz’s growth plan. With a vast catalog of intellectual property, Mattel wants to become more like Marvel, which started as a comics company and transformed into a Hollywood superpower.“In the mid- to long term, we must become a player in film, television, digital gaming, live events, consumer products, music and digital media,” Mr. Kreiz said.And by player he means player. Mattel has a long history in direct-to-DVD animated movies, for instance, but its television division, run by Fred Soulie, is working to capitalize on the streaming boom. The company has a long-term deal to make one or two Barbie cartoons for Netflix annually. “Masters of the Universe: Revelation,” an animated series from the filmmaker Kevin Smith (“Clerks”), arrives on Netflix on July 23.In total, Mr. Soulie has 18 shows in production, including a revamped “Thomas & Friends” and a new incarnation of “Monster High.” An additional 24 are in development.“We’ve been planting a lot of seeds,” Mr. Soulie said, “and we’re about to see the results.” More