Film Review: Dear Lara

The documentary Dear Lara is an infuriating, queasy, shocking, inspiring and powerful watch. It uncovers the prevalence of sexual abuse in the rarefied world of classical music, and was written and directed by a violinist who was also an abuse survivor.

Lara St. John was an accomplished musician at a very young age, and loved (and still loves) the violin repertoire with great passion. She and her brother, also a violinist, were both accepted as scholarship students at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and at 14 and 15 years old, they left their home in Canada to study at Curtis full time.

St. John studied with the eminent violinist Jascha Brodsky, who sexually assaulted her in their lessons over an extended period of time. He obliquely suggested that both she and her brother might lose their scholarships if she spoke up. Eventually she was encouraged by friends to report it to the Dean, who simply told her she wouldn’t be believed if she spoke up.

St. John got a different instructor, stuck it out at Curtis and graduated, moved to Russia for further studies, and went on to a highly successful career as a performer and recording artist.

She persisted in pushing Curtis to accept accountability. In 2019, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a lengthy article about her claims. While the revelations in the article were met with widespread anger and pushback, St. John received many letters from other musicians who had suffered through very similar experiences.

In deciding to make this film, she wanted to give voice to the musicians who agreed to be identified (there were many more who contacted her who chose to remain anonymous.) Their abuse experiences took place at prominent music schools across the US, as well as in the UK, Netherlands and Canada.

In every case the power imbalance was key, and favored the accused. Despite this heavy psychology toll, the people she spoke to went on to successful careers in music. The anger at the abusers, and the institutions that protected them, was ever-present, and in two tragic cases women who had been abused decades earlier took their lives.

St. John documents the cases where justice prevailed, and how the fight for an extension of the statute of limitations gives survivors more power. She has no doubt that institutions will continue to protect those in power positions (and this is sadly evident every day in the news). However, she has used her platform effectively, and given voice to other survivors, and will continue to do so.

Dear Lara premiered at SBIFF last week. You can read more about the film and the cases here.