Elle s'appelait Sarah

Films about the holocaust are always grim, but the French production Sarah's Key adds a couple of twists that increase the stress.

The story begins in Paris in the summer of 1942 when the collaborationist Vichy government of France launches a round up of Jewish families. And here is the first cruel twist. It's not German troops breaking down doors, it is the Parisian police force, ever polite in its brutality. The second twist is more harrowing. Hearing the crashing on the front door, 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance) stuffs her younger brother into a secret closet (camouflaged as part of the bedroom wall) and locks the door.

Sarah and her parents are herded with thousands of other Jews into the Vélodrome d'Hiver, an indoor cycling arena, and left there without food, water or toilets. Here, Sarah's overarching struggle begins. She must rescue her brother.

From here on, Sarah's story is inter-cut with episodes from the present day when French-American investigative journalist Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her architect husband start to renovate the apartment once occupied by the Starzynski family. Learning of the sad history of the "Vél d'Hiv", Julia starts digging into the apartment's history and tracing the fates of Sarah and her family.

The first two thirds of the film focus on Sarah's struggle. Separated from her parents, she seeks to escape from an internment camp and get back to Pari. As we follow her, we also watch as Julia discovers that, while both the adult Starzynskis died during the war, there is no record of what happened to Sarah and her brother.

And here is the dramatic oddity of Sarah's Key. The culmination of Sarah's quest occurs at about the 75-minute mark of this 111-minute film. The half-hour coda is necessary to tie up loose ends such as the fate of Julia's troubled marriage and the joys and disappointments of her search for Sarah. But the tension that carries the first two acts is lost.

Despite that loss, Sarah's Key packs an emotional wallop that will stay with you after you leave the theatre.

So its weak reception in the United States (it grossed just over $100,000 on just five screens when it opened there) is dispiriting. Perhaps the U.S. fear of subtitles is to blame: a good two-thirds of the film is in French with English subtitles. In fact, I suspect that writer-director Gilles Paquet-Brenner could have made the entire film in French, and that making Julia bilingual was his attempt to lure an American audience.

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.

I must admit that I approached this movie and it's subject matter with a fair amount of trepidation given the holocaust theme once again having sat through other movies such as Sophie's Choice, The boy with the striped pajamas and The Pianist. However I must say that the story here was compelling and the performance of Kristin Scott Thomas was excellent as I have come to expect from her in other movies I have her seen her in. Perhaps as it was the French who were first and foremost the main villains in this piece the story of those black days being diluted to a degree by the switch from the past to the present was in some ways a relief from other holocaust movies. Searching for the truth concerning Sarah kept me interested until the final minutes of the film and I recommend it to those lovers of European cinema.

Sarah's Key (2010)

A two pronged film with a harrowing account of French anti-Semitism in World War II paralleling a contemporary account of a reporter discovering the details of one Jewish family destroyed by those events. Eventually the tales collide, and coincide, and another kind of meaning arises about accountability and acceptance.

At first this tale might strike you as both forced--the two narratives are very disjointed and separate, back and forth--and painfully familiar--another riveting, heart wrenching version of Jewish suffering and determination during the Holocaust. But stick with it, because it picks up complexity and nuance as it goes. Once you realize the roundup and mistreatment and eventual killing of the Jews is led in this case by French officials, you know this has a different kind of chill to it. And then you find that the contemporary story is literally connected to the 1940s story.

The leading actress in the 2010 thread, Kristin Scott Thomas, is one of those rare actresses who can command the screen with quiet brooding. She's convincing in a way that we identify with, and our sympathies are with her from the start. As she uncovers the facts of the past, and faces varying degrees of concern and indifference, she herself undergoes a transformation. This, by the end, is really what the story is about, the pertinence for our own times. The specific events around the title idea, the young girl's key, are horrifying to the point of being slightly sensationalist, but the rest of the movie is so studied and careful, you take it in stride.

In all I was surprised and eventually deeply moved by this movie. It's filmed with exquisite camera-work and is sharply edited. And most of all, director Gilles Paquet-Brenner gets the most from all the actors, from the children in the prison camp to the adults on all sides showing their human sides in restrained ways, without caricature.