Sarah’s Key

Sarah’s Key is two films, and had the end of the first marked the end of the film, you might have a 2011 top-10 contender. Instead, Sarah’s Key is that rare combination where one story works well and has strong and powerful gut-wrenching emotion and the other feels like, “well, they paid $10 for tickets, we ought to at least give them more than 50 minutes of entertainment.”

The story that works takes place in 1942 Paris, when the French participated in the Nazi scheme to rid the world of Jews. During two ugly summer days, 10,000 Parisian residents were stuffed into a velodrome (venue for bicycle races for the two-wheel impaired) on their way to concentration camps. Julia (Kristen Scott-Thomas) is a modern-day journalist and faux-expert on the incidents some 60 years previous and comments, “imagine the Superdome (70,000+ seat indoor arena for the New Orleans impaired), only a million times worse.” Elle s’appelait Sarah, the original title, is a French film made by French writer/director Gilles Paquet-Brenner. Isn’t it nice to know the US Governmental failures surrounding Hurricane Katrina, and the flood “survivors” relegated to the Superdome, have international renown? We follow a small family forced from home to velodrome to camps; the daughter Sarah stays with her parents, but she has hidden her brother in a locked closet (hence, key) back in their flat. Her goal is to escape the Holocaust (WWII events resulting in the murder of six million Jews for the history impaired) and get back to free him. This is the tale worth the telling; it ends shockingly soon.

After that, there’s fallout regarding Julia’s relationship with her own family including an unnecessary pregnancy and her personal relationship to Sarah. Anti-climactic doesn’t begin to describe the feeling. Kristen Scott-Thomas keeps going as if Erin Brockovich had never happened, but sadly the emotion is behind us. Eventually, Aiden Quinn shows up, too. Watching how hard they’re acting is actually kind of painful. Stop! Stop! Just save it. It’s the Holocaust. You’re not going to beat that. What have you got? Pregnancy? Possible abortion? Divorce? Unknown familial history? Yeah, up against the extermination of six million people, sure, your problems seem relevant. And the fact that you’re trying soooooo hard, is, quite frankly, embarrassing. Your controversy doesn’t make sense, folks, and even if it did, how could it be anything other than anti-climactic compared to the Holocaust?

It’s been years, but I’ve finally come to the conclusion that Kristen Scott-Thomas will never be big. She’ll never be Helen Mirren, let alone Meryl Streep. The English Patient was the aberration, not the impetus. It makes me feel kinda like I wasted my time, like in the 80s when we all got to know Billy Zabka and Jonathan Ke Quan as if these were real celebrities. I could have done without her story here. On the other hand, I imagine that she is the force bringing the select few spectators out to watch. Thumbs up and thumbs down on Sarah.

Rated PG-13, 111 Minutes
D: Gilles Paquet-Brenner
W: Gilles Paquet-Brenner, Serge Joncour
Genre: Jews in WWII
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Women over 50
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Holocaust deniers