La chiave di Sara

Some years ago, a young friend quit a promising career at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Asked her superiors what they could to retain her services, she replied: "You could give it a happier ending." I can understand why many film-goers might feel they've seen all the Holocaust movies they can handle.

"Sophie's Key" ought to be an exception. Of all the countries occupied by Nazi Germany, France has been the last to acknowledge its complicity in the slaughter of its Jewish citizens. This is a French film about the roundup of Parisian Jews by French police. If they survived the trip, they ended up in Auschwitz, a numerous sliver of the six million exterminated in the "Final Solution."

In the foreground, the story centers on Sophie, a 10-year-old (Melusine Mayance), and the effort of an American journalist (Kristen Scott Thomas) to discover what happened to the family that lived in the apartment she and her husband now occupy. Although well done, the story doesn't really matter. It is one more of the stories, fact or fiction, that have been told and may yet be told of every victim seized and slaughtered.

But mostly they are stories about the Nazis themselves. Here it is a story about French victims of the French government told by French film-makers. Scott Thomas, the English actress who has spent much of her life in France, is just about the only non-Frenchman in this film, and, as usual, she is a magnetic presence. Young Sophie (Mayance) is the film's other pillar. The older Sophie (Charlotte Poutrel) is given little to do except to be beautiful and act troubled but that's quite enough.

No need to spoil the story by telling any part of it. But the role of the Vichy government in the slaughter of French citizens is a part of history that needs to be remembered.

The movie deals with a harrowing episode in European history in a convincing fashion. It cleverly shifts from the past to the present, all the while building towards a tidy conclusion that ties up most of the loose ends, but leaves the audience guessing about the possible future of some of the main characters.

I was slightly disappointed that a few of the present day scenes were a little too frivolous for a movie that was built around such a tragic episode. However some good may come from this if it makes the movie more accessible to the younger audience, who might not be aware of all of the horrors of Jewish persecution during WW2.

When the humble home of a poor Jewish family is raided by a vile strand of the French authorities hoping to get in Hitler's good books, their well-meaning daughter Sarah (a heartwrenching Mélusine Mayance) instinctively hides and locks her little brother in the closet to keep him safe from the unspeakable horrors of the Vel d'Hiv detention centre for Jews. It is only after she and the rest of the family seems well beyond escape that she realises the long-term consequences of her decision and is determined to get back to free him, holding onto that precious key relentlessly as she, like thousands of others, tries her hardest to endure the atrocities of the Holocaust. We as the audience follow this earlier part her captivating story – another of those outstanding tales that are of of a personal nature yet have a grand historical context – mostly on our own, with regular cuts to American-born Parisian-resident journalist Julia Jarmond (the masterful Kristin Scott Thomas) who is writing about the events concerned and soon develops a keen interest in Sarah's life. Her segments are much less harrowing, being set in the present day and involving much more trivial complications than those relating to Sarah, and are actually a welcome relief when they come.

Julia's irritating struggle to dissuade her husband (Frédéric Pierrot) from having her get an abortion after she has endured two miscarriages is as poignant a subplot as any in a drama, allowing us to become familiar with her character before we discover the final fate of the girl along with her. Her inquiries lead her to many different people who are linked to these affairs, from her own father-in-law (Michel Duchaussoy) to Sarah's only son (Aidan Quinn), a simple western entrepreneur clueless about his own mother's past. The fact that a handful of these scenes are in English brings another refreshing touch of variety to the film, helping to make it the must-see beautiful cinematic triumph that it is.

Most movies about the Second World War and the Holocaust show the massive killings of Jews by the Germans. This movie shows the French participation in the holocaust and it shows it with intense analysis of how it affected two women: Sarah a young girl who leaves her brother in a closet assuming she can come back to get him and a journalist who is researching the story years later and discovers how her own family was involved in war issues. Sarah's story is well presented, with the most tragic and sad events of her young life and how they affected her later life. Its a well told story that allows the viewer to see the war and its effects on a lovely and courageous young women. The journalist's story shows how even those who want to know about the war find it difficult to put the pieces together. And it also shows how traumatic it is for the people who try to piece it together. The message is that the holocaust affected us all in different ways but those who lived at the time and those who suffered deportation, even if they did not encounter death, were deeply wounded in more ways than is imaginable. I recommend this movie. Its scenes, music and the flow of events are wonderful. You are always with the story. And the analysis of the human suffering and the wounds of the war are very well portrayed. and in more ways that any one of us will ever be able to understand.

An American journalist in Paris embarks on a story about the Holocaust and discovers connections between the past, her present marriage and her unborn child. Beginning as an article on the 1942 roundup of Jews in France as they were sent off to Auschwitz, it soon becomes a journey of self-discovery as the protagonist stumbles upon a terrible secret of a family forced out of their home and a young girl called Sarah who makes an impulsive decision to leave her younger brother locked in a cupboard. A film about the Holocaust is certain to be moving, but the circumstances in this one are harrowing, the truth astonishing, and the coincidences as unbelievable as the tragedy itself. It is a journalist's quest to dig up the lives of others and unleash the truth, but this film show the price of these actions. Sarah's Key takes us from Paris to Brooklyn to Florence and ultimately to the centre of the heart – showing that even the truth has its cost. And the sadness, as much as we try to unlock it, can never be erased.