Sarah’s Key 2010

    This film is adapted from a 2007 novel by Tatiana de Rosnay.  In 1942, there was a tragic and shameful moment in French history. Over 10,000 Parisian Jews were rounded up by French officials and it was called the Vel’ d’hie Roundup.  These people were taken to local camps and later over 8,000 were sent to German concentration camps.  Sarah Starzynski was ten years old when the Nazi-affilliated Vichy government came to arrest her family.  She tried to protect her brother by locking him in a bedroom closet.  Her parents were sent to Auschwitz but she escaped the holding camp with another girl.  Their intent is to rescue her brother.  In 2009, Julia Jarmond an American journalist living in Paris discovers Sarah's story.  Her architect husband begins a remodel on the apartment originally owned by Sarah's family. 

    This is very good and really pulls you into the story of Sarah and also of the American writer Julia.  Sarah and her family represent so many other families killed during this time by the Nazi war machine.  History from 1942 moves into our time period through information from ownership of the apartment.  This is an intense drama and the Holocaust sequences consist of about a third of the film.  There are some interesting and powerful history lessons.  4* (I really liked this movie)

111 min, Drama directed and written by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and also written by Serge Joncour with Kristin Scott Thomas, Melusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Frederic Pierrot, Michel Duchaussoy, Dominique Frot, Natasha Mashkevich, Gisele Casadesus,Aidan Quinn, Sarah Ber, Arben Bajraktara, Karina Hin, James Gerard, Joseph Rezwin, Kate Moran, Paul Mercier.

Note:  Goodreads gives the book 4.16* out of 5* with 407,831 ratings and 28,725 reviews, Imdb 7.5 out of 10 with 15,605 views, 72% with 116 critics 82% audience with 9,374 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 2 1/2*, Common Sense Media Jeffrey M. Anderson, age 14+, 2* positive, 1* role models, 4* violence, 2* sex, 1* drinking, drugs & smoking, Amazon 4.5* with 914 reviews, Metacritic 59 out of 100 with 30 critics (17 positive, 11 mixed, 2 negative)  6.4 out of 10 with 24 ratings (14 positive 7 mixed 3 negative, Letterboxd 3.4* out of 5*.

Special Note:  This was the most successful French movie in the Netherlands.  It was due to the popularity of the book.  Later The Untouchables 2011 became the record holder.  Kristin Scott Thomas was also in two other films about WWII, The English Patient 1996 and Suite Francaise 2014.  Kristin Scott Thomas has lived in France since she was 19 years old.  She brought up her three children in Paris.  Sometimes she considers herself more French than British.  She was born 24 May 1960 in Redruth Cornwall.  She is divorced from Francois Olivennes, a French gynecologist and the father of her children.