Sarah's Key (Elle s'appelait Sarah) (15)

Drama

In modern-day Paris, a journalist (Kristen Scott Thomas) finds her life becoming entwined with a young girl whose family was torn apart during the notorious Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in 1942.

The critical consensus

An unsurprisingly earnest and visually restrained drama, Sarah’s Key doesn’t entirely escape the straitjacket of what one critic has labelled ‘Holocaust heritage film’.

(*) (*) Tom Dawson, The List, 29/07/2011

Another nuanced turn from Kristin Scott Thomas anchors this respectful if didactic adap of Tatiana de Rosnay’s bestseller.

(*) (*) Tom Dawson, Total Film, 01/08/2011

Exceptional turns by Mélusine Mayance and the ever-excellent Kristin Scott Thomas illuminate a tense and compelling story. The contrived modern-day framing works less well.

(*) (*) Angie Errigo, Empire Online, 01/08/2011

Moving drama blends modern tale with horrors of the Holocaust.

Paul Greenwood, Evening Times, 04/08/2011

Sarah’s Key is painful in all the wrong ways.

(*) (*) (*) The Telegraph, 04/08/2011

The first two acts of Sarah's Key, which disclose the connection between past and present, and the gruesome outcome of Sarah's desperate return to her Paris apartment, certainly move along at a rattling pace. The problem is in the modern day, as we move from Brooklyn, Paris and Florence on the trail of the grownup Sarah, things get a bit TV movie-ish. But Kristin Scott Thomas gives it weight.

(*) (*) Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 04/08/2011

Moving tale World War II.

(*) Chris Tookey, Daily Mail, 05/08/2011

Occasionally moving but more often appalling.

(*) (*) (*) Emma Simmonds, Little White Lies, 04/08/2011

It's a powerful, upsetting film and while it may meander towards the end, stick around for a tearjerking finale.

(*) Daily Record, 05/08/2011

The picture is superbly acted, especially by 10-year-old Melusine Mayance as Sarah, and tense and distressing in parts.

(*) (*) Henry Fitzherbert, Daily Express, 05/08/2011

The story suffers from one too many twists and a rushed second half that leaves you wanting to know much more, but Kristin Scott Thomas is magnificent, as is the young Melusine Mayance, who plays the titular Sarah.

(*) (*) Alison Rowat, The Herald, 04/08/2011

The really striking thing about the Holocaust, according to Sarah's Key, is how ambivalent it makes an American reporter feel about her marriage, 70 years later.

Nicholas Barber, The Independent on Sunday, 07/08/2011

The story, covering some 60-odd years in Paris, New York and Italy, is inevitably both affecting and shocking. But it is altogether too busy and complicated a narrative, the makers apparently mistaking confusion for complexity.

Philip French, The Observer, 07/08/2011