We all know about Nazi Germany and its anti-semitism, it is at the heart of that country's twentieth century nightmare and its historical angst. The French have managed to sidestep their own version of anti-semitism but increasingly that past, especial
Sarah’s Key
A Film by Gilles Paquet-Brenner
In cinemas from April 14th
We all know about Nazi Germany and its anti-semitism, it is at the heart of that country’s twentieth century nightmare and its historical angst. The French have managed to sidestep their own version of anti-semitism but increasingly that past, especially around the collaboration with Nazi Germany is being revisited.
It is a period in French history which is rarely acknowledged. In Paris the deportees are remembered in the unsettling memorial under the Isle de la Cite and there are places such as the still deserted village of Oradour-sur-Glane where the inhabitants were all killed by the Nazis.
In “Sarah’s Key” Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas), an American journalist married to a Frenchman, is commissioned to write an article about the notorious Vel d’Hiv round up, which took place in Paris, in 1942 when thousands of Parisian Jews were imprisoned in the Winter Velodrome. She stumbles on her husband’s family secret which will link her to the poignant story of a young Jewish girl, Sarah.
Julia learns that the apartment she and her husband Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand’s family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers - especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive - the more she uncovers about Bertrand’s family and about France.
The two stories, which feed on each other are enriched by the two female leads: Melusine Mayance as the young Sarah and Kristin Scott Thomas as Julia. Melusine Mayance gives us raw emotion while Kristin Scott Thomas seems to withhold emotional display but the charcater emanates intensity through subtle gestures and movement..
She has a face into which the audience reads a range of emotiuons and thoughts so that the journey she goes on in pursuit of Sarah is one in which she exposes herself as well as history.
There is a clever juxtaposition of the 1940s and the present day with the older scenes filmed in suffocating close ups with jolting hand held camera shots while the contemporary scenes are more lush and light.
