Sarah's Key

Sarah’s Key

Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

With Kristin Scott Thomas, Melusine Mayance, Aiden Quinn, Frederic

Pierrt and Niels Arestrup

In July 1942, the  French police rounded up thousands of Jews, warehousing them for days in absolutely horrific conditions in the Vel d hiv bicycle stadium..  There were no toilets, no water, no food, no ventilation.  They were then herded into trains and trucks and sent to Auschwitz.    The French inflicted these horrors on their own people.

Sarah’s Key, a serious and handsomely produced film, directed by  Gilles Paquet –Brenner, examines this infamous incident and the aftershocks which continue to the present.    The movie tells parallel stories of a present day American journalist Julia Jarmond(Kristin Scott Thomas) and  a victim of the round up, Sarah Starzynski(Melusine Mayance). 

Julia stumbles upon the history of Sarah when she and her French husband                     (Frederic Pierrot) begin to renovate the Paris apartment that has been owned by her husband’s family for years.   It is the very apartment from which Sarah’s family was seized 60 years before.   Julia is writing about the Vel d hiv incident for a French Magazine and becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to the Jewish family snatched from the apartment.  In doing so, she uncovers her husband’s family secret.

On the day of the round up, 8 year old Sarah hides her younger brother in a closet.  Her family is sent to the nightmarish fetid and filthy transit

camp and finally is trucked to a concentration camp, separated forever.  Sarah is determined to somehow get back to her brother who she locked in a closet. 

Through assiduous research and travels to Italy and New York City,

Julia pieces together Sarah’s story.   Her findings cause problems in her own relationship with her husband and his family. 

The time shifting narrative shows what becomes of Sarah who eventually has her own family.  But the horrors are etched on her soul and she cannot get beyond her pain.

Overhead shots pan the transit camp; there are close-up hand held camera shots that capture the terror, desperation, exhaustion on the faces of the prisoners.   A sense of doom is pervasive.

Kristin Scott Thomas is absolutely radiant throughout Sarah’s Key.

Melusine Mayance as the poignant young Sarah is perfect as a child determined to protect her sibling and then to somehow survive.

There are scores of Holocaust dramas.  However, audiences want happy endings,so many of these stories end on an ‘up’ note.  Sarah’s Key refuses

to make the audience feel good and to show a bright side.   What happened then is beyond horrific; the film expresses an important truth.