Sarah’s Key a film by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, this is a moving film which links an event in Paris during World War Two with a woman’s discoveries around her husband’s old family apartment. In 1942, the Jewish Starzynski family are rounded up by the police for transportation to Nazi concentration camps. Thinking she will be back soon to free him, little Sarah locks her younger brother in a cupboard, setting in motion a train of events that will haunt her the rest of her life.

American journalist, Julia Jarmond, is living in Paris with her French husband, renovating an old apartment that has been in her in-laws’ family since the war. While researching a story around the arrest of Paris Jews in 1942, she stumbles on a link with the apartment and finds herself investigating what happened to the Starzynskis.

This is a sensitive drama that takes an aspect of the Holocaust and makes it very personal. Kristin Scott Thomas has that knack of portraying the emotions you feel as the story of what happens to Sarah unravels. There’s another amazing performance by young Sarah, played by child actor, Melusine Mayance, a rising star perhaps? Beautifully and atmospherically filmed.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: Sarah's Key, the movie
Catalogue link: Sarah's Key, the novel