Legacy of loss a poignant tale

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FILM REVIEW: SARAH’S KEY
Reviewed by Adam Kamien
Rating: ***

SARAH’S Key might be a cut above the spate of recent Holocaust films, which try to pass off tarted up emotional manipulation as entertainment, but a cure for World War II fatigue – not the khaki outfits – it ain’t.

This slick French production, based on the Tatiana de Rosnay novel Her Name Was Sarah, stars the brilliant Kristin Scott Thomas as Julia Armond, an American journalist living in Paris with her French husband Bertrand Tezac (Frederic Pierrot) and their teenage daughter Zoe (Karina Hin).

The family is set to move into Bertrand’s childhood home in the Marais (the Jewish quarter of Paris), which has been in his family since 1942. At the same time Julia is researching a piece on the Vel d’Hiv round-up of Jews by French authorities in 1942, which resulted in more than 13,000 French Jews being herded into internment camps before being transported to Auschwitz.

One such makeshift camp, which housed around 7500 prisoners, was a Parisian velodrome called Velodrome d’Hiver (The Winter Velodrome).

Julia finds out that her husband’s grandparents “acquired” the apartment in 1942 and starts scrutinising how it came into their possession.

She discovers that the previous owners, the Starzynski family, was forced to leave their home during the Val d’Hiv round-up and that the parents were eventually murdered in Auschwitz.

But when she is unable to find records of Sarah Starzynski (Melusine Mayance), who was 10 at the time her family was imprisoned, or her younger brother Michel (Paul Mercier), Julia sets out to solve the mystery of their fates.

Sarah’s Key is also a film about a relationship in decline. After miscarriages and failed attempts to conceive, Julia is elated when she learns she is pregnant, but workaholic Bertrand doesn’t share her enthusiasm.

The movie follows Julia and Sarah concurrently, using flashbacks to span the six decades since the Nazi occupation of France.

The transitions don’t detract from the film’s pacing (often the case with this sort of interjectory narrative) and aside from a lull in the final act, when it lapses into murder-mystery territory, Sarah’s Key is mostly absorbing.
At the film’s centre are strong performances from all the main players, with Mayance in particular shining as the wilful, stoic Sarah.

Scott Thomas and Perrot, who worked together on the 2008 French film I Loved You So Long, also have good chemistry.

However, while the overall package is adequate, even moving in parts, this is nothing we haven’t seen before and it always seems a shame when stories as potentially affecting as this are consigned to the “good, not great” bin at JB Hi-Fi.

Sarah’s Key will be in limited release from December 23.

ADAM KAMIEN

Photo caption: Kristin Scott Thomas in a scene from Sarah’s Key.