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Recent films like The Reader and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas have attempted to put a human face on the vast tragedy of the Holocaust, and have reminded us of the legacy and the consequences of that awful period of 20th century history. Just when we thought that there were no more Holocaust stories left to tell, along comes this powerful and moving French drama. The film uses a little known event from French history as a starting point for a deeply affecting drama about guilt, redemption, family secrets, the comfort of strangers, and hope in a time of war and madness. In 1942, French authorities rounded up thousands of Jewish citizens and confined them inside the Paris Velodrome in appalling conditions for several days. They endured stifling heat, a lack of water and food, and basic sanitary conditions like toilets and showers. They were then shipped off to transit camps, where women and children were forcibly separated from their families. One such family was the Starzynskis. When the police burst into their small apartment, ten-year old Sarah (Melusine Mayance) hid her younger brother inside a wardrobe, locking the door behind her. She kept the key throughout her ordeal, hoping to return home to rescue him. The film alternates between these harrowing scenes and the present day, where Paris based American journalist Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas) is writing an article on this disturbing and shameful incident. But as she probes into the past, Julia discovers a personal connection between the fate of Sarah's family and her own family. She learns that her husband's family purchased the Starzynski's home soon after the family was removed. This makes her more determined to discover Sarah's fate, a decision that puts a strain on her marriage. Her quest takes her from present day Paris to Italy and the United States, and her journey has a big impact on her own personal life. Scott Thomas has previously delivered strong performances in other French dramas (Leaving, I've Loved You So Long, etc), but here she finds one of the more emotionally substantial roles of her career. Her intelligent presence, obsessive nature and air of sadness lift this solid and moving drama. Also impressive is Mayance, who brings a feisty quality, resilience and quiet determination to her role as Sarah as she moves through a variety of emotions - fear, doubt, terror – with great conviction. Niels Arestrup, who was so effectively menacing in A Prophet, brings gruff but unexpectedly tender quality to his performance as a farmer who reluctantly shelters Sarah from the authorities. Sarah's Key is based on the best-selling novel written by Tatiana De Rosnay, in which the ghosts of the Holocaust continue to haunt the survivors, who are often wracked with guilt. Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner handles the material with great sensitivity, but avoids descending into cheap melodrama. The harrowing scenes set inside the Velodrome bristle with a palpable sense of outrage. Paquet-Brenner maintains a steady but assured pace as the film builds towards its final, emotionally devastating scene when Julia meets Sarah's son (played by Aidan Quinn), who discovers the truth of his own history. Technical contributions are all excellent, from Francoise Dupertuis' production design, to Eric Perron's costumes, Max Richter's poignant and unobtrusive score, Pascal Ridao's evocative cinematography, and Herve Schneid's editing which fluidly moves between the different time frames. Sarah's Key is a powerful, harrowing and moving tale that explores one of the darkest and most shameful periods of France's history, but it ultimately proves to be something of an uplifting tale of redemption and forgiveness.

Say it isn't so, Joe. But this film from the French novel, Sara's Key by French novelist, De Rosnay's seems more intent on acquitting her native land's citizens in a hold "harmless" verdict than telling a realistic story of French collaboration with the Nazi's for no other apparent reason than their own belief that their country too would be better off without a Jewish population as well as Germany. This phenomenon which in many countries still in Europe has left its attitudes behind even today is one of the most tragic and psychotic episodes of WWII Europe. But as the author, director and actress Kristin Scott Thomas all conspire to do is to reach the verbalization of the age old question "What would you have done"? In reference to the question would you turn your neighbors over to the Nazi's to be murdered or would you have taken the higher road and posed a resistance to the holocaust implementation? In it's acquittal of Nazi collaborators and outright Anti-Semites in 1942 France, it not only indites the guilty but accuses France's present citizens of Antisemitism. I think the guilty get off too easily and the present French citizens are all unfairly called Nazi Sympathizers. It's like saying all hippies in the 60's are guilty of the Manson murders and that all fans of Classic Rock music have the same philosophies of the murderers. If this case was brought forward even in a French court, the judge and jury would conclude that the premise of this movie does not relate to the conclusions. This is not only a story flaw but it leads the director into several misguided plot errors. i.e. Why does the Title of the novel get resolved in just half the movie? The audience is left with the question, What is the purpose of the second half of this movie? The hard questions are all disregarded and in a benign way the movie comes off as mildly preachy. Watch History Channel for the history of these issues of Nazi collaboration by European citizens or read the much better more realistic Novel The Glass Room.

I saw the movie, and I read a few of the reviews. Even though I know we watched the same movie, I seem to have taken away a different message than many others. To me, the movie I saw was not so much about France in 1942, the "Vel' d'Hiv" Roundup, or how it affected the life of one small girl. To me, the movie was about the nature of man - how little it changes, how much it affects the world, and how events we look on as "horrible," "tragic," and "history" are really just parts of our everyday lives.

The movie grabs you right from the start when one family, the Starzynskis, is taken from their home and packed into a small velodrome with 8,000 other French Jews before being transported to concentration camps. Viewers comment, "I didn't know this ever happened," or "How could people treat each other this way" when the truth is that this type of thing is still happening today in various parts of the world right under our noses. Oh, the faces have changed, along with the players, and the circumstances, but the cold, dark soul of humankind still carries on its atrocities behind a veil of self-righteousness, and complacent ignorance. This is what conflict looks like, and this is what it does to people. There are many more casualties than just the just the poor souls duped into putting on uniforms, and laying down their lives in that ironic twist called patriotism. They kill on the premise of preserving life, imprison others on the premise of creating freedom, and tear down the fiber of man on the premise of building up mankind. The worst part is that each and every one of us is just as guilty as any who ever gave an order or pulled a trigger because we allow this insanity to continue.

The movie has another side as well. It also shows how, even in times of adversity, men can have compassion. The movie's heroine, Sarah, likely would not be alive today if not for the compassion first of a camp guard, and second by a family who took pity upon her and her fellow escapee. And, then, there's the compassion of Sarah, herself, who, in trying to save her brother, ended up being his executioner, and found it impossible to live out her life in the knowledge of what she had done. It shows how even though mankind can collectively act in heartless fashion, there still remain among us those whose hearts have not turned to stone, and who still feel the power of the bonds of brotherhood. Despite all of the circumstances surrounding that "different" Summer of '42, Sarah does not place the blame on any other but herself, and, after attempts to erase her past fail, she takes her own life.

No, no matter what you may feel, this movie is not about the past. This movie only uses the past to illustrate the present. All of us who sit around content with our relative peace while innocent lives are taken in Afghanistan, while mothers abandon their children in Somalia, and while atrocity still affects the world like the festering sore of some deadly infection are just as guilty as if we'd done the deeds ourselves. Like Sarah, we will all find that we cannot hide peace in some closet, lock it away for days, and hope that we can return to find it just as we left it. And, also like Sarah, once we discover what we have done to our world, we will have to try to find a way to live with ourselves in the realization of what we have done.

Sarah's Key features two alternating stories initially set in Paris, one concerning the fate of Sarah, a 10 year old Jewish girl and her family during the Nazi occupation in 1942 and another set in 2009 involving Julia, an American born French journalist, who has been researching the infamous Velodrome d'Hiver incident—a bicycle arena where thousands of French Jews were interned in squalid conditions after being rounded up by the French police upon orders of the Nazis.

When Julia discovers that the apartment she and her French born husband are about to move into, bequeathed to them by her husband's family, is the same apartment that belonged to a Jewish family that had been deported, her interest in the fate of French Jewry in World War II becomes personal—something much more than just one of her journalistic assignments. Before you know it, she pays a call to an expert Holocaust researcher who is able to provide her with the names of the deported family, which includes Sarah and her younger brother.

Perhaps the most gripping scenes in 'Sarah's Key' involve the deportation of the Jews during the infamous Parisian roundup. The horror is first aptly conveyed in the mother's panicked reaction to the French policeman's orders for everyone in the household to leave (including the children). As the police look for the husband (who is soon to be arrested when he returns home, unaware that the police have arrived), the two children sneak off into another room. Sarah inexplicably locks her younger brother in a closet and keeps the key, expecting soon to return and free him. Things get worse for the family when they're shipped to the Velodrome and they're forced to remain there for days on end, without toilets and in stifling heat. Frightened adults as well as children witness multiple suicides, as despairing deportees jump from the rafters. When the victims are transported to relocation camps, the full horror is conveyed when the parents are separated from their children and are driven off in trucks to death camps.

Like many comparable films created by German filmmakers, the scenarists appear to be ambivalent on the subject of homegrown complicity in the Holocaust. One scene illustrates this ambivalence—as the Jews are being deported, one French woman calls out from the window of her apartment, in substance, that the Jews are getting what's coming to them. But another man, in another apartment, yells to the woman, 'they'll come for you next'. Similarly, the villainous French police have one good apple amongst their ranks—the one who allows Sarah and her soon to be dying friend, to crawl under the barbed wire and make their escape from the relocation camp. And yes, there's even a quid pro quo when it comes to villagers: before taken in by the kindly couple, there was that gruff, homeowner who sends the children away without helping them. By mainly focusing on the 'righteous gentile' couple who saves Sarah, the film's scenarists may be giving the wrong impression that there was a equal balance between the bad and the good. In reality, the 'helpers' were few and far between, in occupied France.

While it was a bit of a stretch to accept the whole idea that Julia, a person who had already been researching Holocaust history in her job as a journalist, was now directly connected to a horror story involving her husband's family's apartment, the horror story itself proves to be far more contrived. I'm speaking of the whole idea of the kindly husband and wife who who decide to take Sarah back to the apartment to discover the fate of her brother. First of all, the husband wouldn't have had any trouble concluding that the child was dead already if he was still in the closet. So why would he allow Sarah to go up and open the closet, subjecting her to a trauma that haunted her for the rest of her life (until her suicide in 1955). Even more unconvincing is the idea that the husband and wife would have actually brought Sarah along to investigate what happened to the brother. How could they be so sure that the bribe would work when they were on the train? All the husband had to do was make the trip to Paris himself, bring the key and ask the new owner (Julia's husband's grandfather) to open the closet. As Sarah's discovery of her dead brother in the closet is the key moment in the film, and the events leading up to that moment are wholly implausible, the overall impact of the film is diminished.

Events depicted in the present day also tend to lessen the film's overall impact. Should we really care about Julia's fight with her husband over whether she should keep the baby? Perhaps if the husband was a more fleshed out character, the interaction between the two of them would have been more compelling.

Finally, 'Sarah's Key' asks the question, "what would you have done?" had you been under the yoke of Nazi occupation. It's instructive to compare the French and Danes during World War II. Denmark initially faced a much more benign occupation than France—the Nazis allowed them self-government and did not challenge them when they refused to enact laws against the Jews. But when the Nazis changed course in 1943 in Denmark, and a reign of terror did begin (similar to what happened in France), the Danes arranged for their Jewish population to escape by boat to neutral Sweden. In France, due to widespread anti-Semitism, there was little sympathy for the Jews to begin with and no such collective will emerged. The filmmakers, however, hint that the majority had no choice to act otherwise against the Nazis.

'Sarah's Key' does have some affecting moments particularly in its scenes involving the deportation of French Jews, but the film's central dramatic moment is too contrived to be believable.

Thankfully, in 'Sarah's Key', the depiction of the 'Vel' d'Hiv Round Up' and its related events was less difficult to take in than it was in the film 'The Round Up' (refer to author's review of that movie), emotionally. The perspective and plot of this movie in centered on the heart wrenching effects of the death of Sarah's young brother, a tragedy that marked Sarah's life to the point where only her own death could stop the pain. The story is told from the perspective of a journalist (Kristin Scott Thomas) who has an indirect connection to the apartment where Sarah had lived and her young brother died horribly; that concept was artistically a good idea.

Kristin Scott Thomas turns out another good performance. I doubt I've ever said anything bad about her or her work; a hardened fan simply can't. The supporting cast and in particular Mélusine Mayance, who plays young Sarah, was above reproach; Mélusine is as convincing and believable as could ever be. The English title is absolutely the best possible choice for the movie; the original French title somehow is not nearly as good a choice. The original version of the film is bilingual (French and English - mostly the former) and it is not close to Hollywood formulated production, thankfully; a happy-ish ending is thus much more of a pleasant experience. Well worth seeing and so I recommend it without reservation to anyone interested in the subject.

(Rating: 12A, 111 mins) Written by Zen Terrelonge of zentertainmentweekly.com

Starring - Kristen Scott Thomas, Melusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Frederic Pierro, Aidan Quinn.

A powerful and gripping drama set in both the time of the second world war 1942 and the years proceeding it, as well as the present day.

Throughout the duration, the film flits between the two ages seamlessly just as it does with the French and English language.

The majority of the film takes place in France, it's the setting for the disgraceful suffering the Jews suffered at the hands of their fellow countrymen during the time of Hitler's command.

Julia (Scott Thomas) is the investigative journalist in the present day that retraces the steps of a hidden tragedy that happened when thousands of Jews were rounded up and contained in a temporary prison the Velodrome which held inhumane conditions.

There was no food, no water and no toilets, not only were men taken but also women and children had to suffer the torture which saw many die or go mad from the trauma.

This particular event was swept under the carpet and ignored by locals and most in the present are unaware it even took place.

Back to 1942 and young Sarah (Melusine Mayance) and her little brother are playing together in a Parisian apartment whilst their mother does motherly type things, presumably hiding biscuits on the top shelf, cleaning up sticking fingerprints and so on.

A thundering rap of knuckles bangs at the door and in enters a soldier demanding to know who's at home, Sarah conceals her brother promising to return to him and so she and her parents are carted off the the prison before they get divided at the concentration camps.

Sarah finds an accomplice and together the two embark on a mission of rescue to retrieve her brother from the apartment she promised to return to.

Without warning the scenes change from present to past, past to present and gradually not only do we see Sarah progressing on her quest and the dangers that lie in her wake, we also see American Julia getting closer and digging deeper to the history and secrets around the brave little girl.

Scott Thomas' Julia is bold, determined and fixated with her path to finding out the truth behind the past which runs as a mirror image to the same manner in which Sarah is tackling her own target.

With Julia's research, a discovery is made which completely changes her life for the revelation involves her more than she could have ever thought possible.

Love and passion is the fuel for the films engine and as the film progresses the mind will wander into along its own calculative route as it tries to derive what the outcome of the tangled web will be.

7/10

Sarah's Key is released in cinemas in the UK from 5th August.

For more visit - http://wp.me/p1AJJT-mV

Just as we saw with "The Reader," here is a different Holocaust story to tell. Most frightening of all, this took place NOT in Germany, but in France.

Siding with Adolf Hitler, and hoping to gain favor, the French authorities round up many Jews and send them to the Vel d'Hiv detention centre.

In an attempt to save her brother, little Sarah (played masterfully by Melusine Mayance) locks her little brother in the closet and hides the key on herself. Once she realizes this may have the opposite effect, Sarah is determined to escape and free her brother. No matter what happens, she keeps that key close to her at all times, even while the most heinous atrocities go on around her.

Now flash forward 70 years or so, and we meet journalist Julia Jarmand, an American living in Paris (played excellently by the always wonderful Kristin Scott Thomas). The movie plays out this type of parallel construction cutting back from Sarah's efforts to save her little brother, to Scott Thomas investigating the story about the atrocities at the Vel d'Hiv detention centre.

For the record, this type of parallel construction really works in the film. Every time we see Julia Jarmand investigating the story, it's like a sigh of relief after watching the terrible moments little Sarah must endure to get back to her family's residence and unlock her starving brother.

Julia discovers a connection to little Sarah and her story and the movie takes a turn for the interesting. That is all I want to say, as I don't wish to give away too much. See the movie; it will likely be the French entrant in the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars this year. Was one of the best films I saw this year.

The story of Sarah's Key, is probably one of the least known stories of the Second World War. On the 16th of July 1942, thousands of French Jewish families in Paris, men, women & children were rounded up. 4,000 children were in that number. The French Police rounded them up under the instruction of the German Gestapo. The Vélodrome D'Hiver (Vel' D'Hiv) was where they were held in Paris. Until being sent to an internment camp on the edge of Paris. From their the men were separated from the women, then the women had to leave behind their children who were under 12.

Sarah's Key is the horrifying story of just one family & how these events effected them. All of the French Jewish People who survived were then sent to Auschwitz, for extermination.

The horrific story of Sarah's family & the generations after her, are told in full in the book, unfortunately the movie cannot convey all that went on. Kristin Scott Thomas is fantastic as Julia. It's a story that needs telling... I hope the movie moves you, this is the kind of history that impacts you at the deepest level. I will never forget this story, the people & all that happened.