Sarah’s Key – review
Screenwriter/director Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s adaptation of Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel of the same name, about a driven journalist’s quest for truth and the disclosure of the extraordinarily struggle of a young persecuted girl, is one of this year’s most engaging and moving films.
The premise of a ruthless reporter, letting the subject take over their life and embarking on a moral crusade to unearth secrets is not a new one, but the sheer horror of the subject matter and the expertly woven interlinking of the past and the present, make this a layered film – tackling conflicting themes of pride, shame, secrets and loyalty – thoroughly gripping.
American in Paris, Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas) proposes a controversial feature for a high-brow magazine, looking to clinch a 10-page feature with an historical nostalgia story about the deportation of 10,000 Jews by French police to the Velodrome D’Hiver stadium in July 1942, from where they were moved onto Drancy internment camp, before inevitably ending up in Auschwitz.
However, what starts out as a meaty exposé to awaken those ignorant of this brief controversial involvement of the French in the Nazi’s deportation work in the Second World War, develops into a personal search for the disturbing truth behind her own links to the shameful incident, when she discovers that a house she and her husband Bertrand (Frédéric Pierrot) are looking to take over from Bertrand’s parents, was the former residence of one of the deported families – the Starzynski family.
Julia finds out that not all of the family has been accounted for in death certificates and Auschwitz extermination records, leaving the daughter of the family, Sarah (Mélusine Mayance), unaccounted for. As Julia probes and investigates – assisted by various connected contacts – she pieces together the astonishing journey of Sarah Starzynski.
The film’s name is a reference to the key that Sarah uses to lock her brother in a cupboard in her house, so that the police officer would not take him away in the deportation. This key sparks the events that make Sarah’s story stand out from the rest of the thousands innocence people led away to their fate that summer.
The film fuses together chronological flashbacks of Sarah’s experience with the journalist’s real-time piecing together of the puzzle and the whereabouts Sarah Starzynski, 70 years later. Adding depth to the present-day action and Julia’s character, we see that she is also battling a failing marriage; the couple divided over the discovery of her pregnancy after years of conception complications since their first child – now a teenager.
Julia’s research into the past is affecting her decision-making in the present and Thomas is convincing as the distressed and driven woman, unrelenting in her pursuit of answers, while assimilating unnecessary guilt over a suppressed tragic event that not many are still alive to remember.
This partially subtitled French/American-spoken drama is an eye-opening and heart-wrenching tale of one girl’s torment on a collision course with another woman’s resolve to get closure. Other than historically, the women are linked by loyalty: Sarah’s loyalty in coming back for her brother and Julia’s loyalty to the truth.
The smoothness of transition, back and forth, between the past and present plotlines makes Sarah’s Key a continually engrossing film, as the harrowing story steadily unravels and it is beautifully complemented by tender music from composer and pianist Max Richter.
Sarah’s Key is showing at the Rio Cinema until 18 August.
Sarah’s Key (12A)
Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Starring: Kristin Scott Thomas, Mélusine Mayance, Frédéric Pierrot, Aidan Quinn, Niels Arestrup.
Running time: 110 minutes