Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key

111 min - Drama  -  22 July 2011 (USA)

Director:       Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Writers:        Gilles Paquet-Brenner,

                      Serge Joncour

Stars:            Kristin Scott Thomas,

                      Mélusine Mayance and

                      Niels Arestrup

Sarah's Key is a French drama starring Kristen Scott Thomas and follows her journalist's present day investigation into the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, and a story of a young girl's experiences during the Nazi occupation of France. It is an adaptation of the novel Elle s'appelait Sarah by Tatiana de Rosnay and has been critically well-received, currently holding an 88% fresh rating on the film review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.

Plot

In the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance) denies to the authorities carrying out the roundup that her little brother Michel is at home, and locks him in a closet, to protect him. She tells him to stay there, and wait until she returns. She takes the key with her, when she and her parents are transported to the Vel' d'Hiv.

When a woman plans on escaping Vel' d'Hiv by sneaking past the guards, Sarah wants to give her the key so she can rescue Michel, but her father does not think she will succeed, and is therefore against it. To his surprise she succeeds, and he regrets that he has not given the key to the woman. Judging that his son's fate in the closet is even worse than being deported too, he reports to a guard that the boy is still at home, but no action is taken.

They are transferred to the Beaune-la-Rolande camp. The men are deported to the death camp in Auschwitz, the women later too, and the children have to stay. Sarah tries to escape with a friend, Rachel, after noticing a small hole in the ground underneath a fence. A guard stops them, whom Sarah recognizes from before the war. She remembers he had always been friendly to her in the past, and begs him to let them go, she has to save her brother. After making sure no one can see, he agrees, lifting a hole in the fence to let them out.

After searching for a safe place, exhausted, Sarah and Rachel fall asleep in a dog house. In the morning, they are awoken by the man who owns the dog house. Realizing who they are, he and his wife fortunately decide to help them. But Rachel has a life-threatening disease, and when they are forced to call in a doctor, the doctor refuses to help a Jew and informs the police, who take her away, while Jules and Genevieve, the elderly couple, hide Sarah in the basement. After convincing the couple to help her find her brother, they travel with Sarah to Paris. Sneaking past the concierge, she runs up to her house, knocking on the door furiously. A boy, twelve years-old, answers. She rushes in to her old room, past the boy, and unlocks the cupboard. Horrified by what she finds, she starts screaming. The boy's father rushes in, and carries out the decomposing body of Sarah's little brother, which had not yet been discovered. It turned out that immediately after the round-up, people had taken many Jews' apartments.

Sarah lives with the old couple, who treat her like the daughter who they never had, until she is 18. In letters, the couple describes the sadness and melancholy of Sarah, which never goes away. When she turns 18, though, she moves to the States, hoping to put everything that happened behind her, with the name Sarah Dufaure, which is the last name of Jules and Genevieve. She gets married, and has a son, William, although she stops corresponding soon after being married. When her son is 9, no longer able to handle what happened to her parents, and Michel - whose death she blames on herself. She commits suicide by driving into an oncoming truck, although her husband and son are under the impression it was an accident for many years.

In the present, the husband of journalist Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas) inherits the house, and she investigates what happened in the past. She tells William about his mother, who did not know his mother's history or even that she was a Jew. He does not believe it, but it is confirmed by his dying father.

Julia is unexpectedly pregnant, but her husband does not want to have another child, even though he cherishes their 11-years-old, Zoe. She hesitates about getting an abortion, but keeps the child. She gives birth to a daughter and calls her Sarah.

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