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.
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’.
Another nuanced turn from Kristin Scott Thomas anchors this respectful if didactic adap of Tatiana de Rosnay’s bestseller.
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.
Moving drama blends modern tale with horrors of the Holocaust.
Sarah’s Key is painful in all the wrong ways.
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.
Moving tale World War II.
Occasionally moving but more often appalling.
It's a powerful, upsetting film and while it may meander towards the end, stick around for a tearjerking finale.
The picture is superbly acted, especially by 10-year-old Melusine Mayance as Sarah, and tense and distressing in parts.
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.
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.
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.
France and the Holocaust: A return of the repressed
General release. Check local listings for show times.
Cameo, Edinburgh from Friday October 7, 2011, until Thursday October 13, 2011. Check website for times.. More info: http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/