Film: Sarah’s Key
Cast includes: Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient), Mélusine Mayance (Ricky), Niels Arestrup (A Prophet), Aidan Quinn (Legends of the Fall)
Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Pretty Things)
Genre: Historic Based Drama (2010). Based on a novel by Tatiana De Rosnay. Partly in French with subtitle
In brief: At the beginning, Julia suggests, “Stories not told become something else… forgotten.” As a journalist, she knows first hand about stories that have been forgotten. The film begins with scenes from July 16, 1942. There’s a loud knock on the door of the Paris apartment of the Starzynski family. “Police. Open up!” It’s the beginning of the deportations of Jews from Paris. Ten-year-old Sarah thinks the safest place for her 4-year-old brother is in a secret closet. To make sure he stays hidden, she locks the closet and makes him promise to keep quiet and wait for her. The Starzynskis were among 13,000 French citizens arrested and taken to the Vélodrome stadium to await transport to the Beaune la Rolande camp, and on to Auschwitz.
When the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup makes news again in 2009, Julia wants to investigate and write an article. But there’s precious little to go on. For starters, there was only a single photo taken at the Vélodrome. It wasn’t the Nazis in charge this time; it was the French… and they weren’t in the habit of documenting atrocities. As it turns out, Julia and her husband are planning to remodel and move into his grandparent’s apartment in the Marias section of Paris. It had been the Jewish ghetto in 1942, and when Julia realizes that her husband’s grandparents moved into the apartment in August 1942, she wonders about the coincidence. Were the previous residents among those deported? As it turns out, Sarah’s story and Julia’s quest for remembrance are to become intertwined.
Adapted from an acclaimed novel, this drama uses actual events as the starting point for the story. As with other holocaust dramas, it’s hard not to be moved. There were so many stories that might have been told, if only there were people left alive with a desire to revisit this painful era, Julia discovers. With little time left to find eyewitnesses, it’s often necessary to rely on the memories of those who were children at the time. So many holocaust stories have already been told, that one wonders if yet another is worth telling. While this one is somewhat predictable and predictably sentimental, it’s well told… even though it doesn’t break new ground. The site of the Vélodrome is now the Ministry of Interior, and the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup is memorialized in a very clean, modern museum. It can be awfully easy to forget that there were 13,000 stories here that have never been told… and never will be.
2 popped kernels
Well told… even considering the sentimentality and predictable outcome
Popcorn Profile
Rated: PG-13
Primary Audience: Grown-ups
Gender Appeal: Any audience
Distribution: Mainstream limited release
Mood: Somber
Tempo: Cruises comfortably
Visual Style: Nicely varnished realism
Character Development: Engaging
Language: True to life
Social Significance: Thought provoking
