Sarah's Key
Encyclopedia
Sarah's Key is a French drama starring Kristin Scott-Thomas and follows an American journalist's present-day investigation into the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (where French police in German-occupied Paris on 16 and 17 July 1942 rounded up 13,152 predominantly non-French Jewish emigres and refugees and their French-born children and grandchildren, who were then shipped by rail to Auschwitz where they were murdered). It tells the story of a young girl's experiences during these events, vividly illustrating the willing, and even enthusiastic, participation of the French bureaucracy, including the Paris police, French Secret Service, and French army in aiding and abetting this Nazi persecution and the plundering by the Germans and French of the victims' property. It is also a story of how a farmer and his wife, and by extension a number of French country people, hid and protected Jews from Vichy authorities, the Germans, and French collaborators, at great risk to their own lives. It is an adaptation of the novel Elle s'appelait Sarah ("Her Name Was Sarah") by Tatiana de Rosnay
and has been critically well-received, currently holding a 73% rating on the film review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes
. Although British, Scott-Thomas delivers her English dialogue in an American accent, but for most of the film she speaks fluent French as she is Anglo-French. She has done many Anglo-French movies in French, and received a César Award
nomination for her compelling performance in this role. In the movie she is married to a Frenchman and their daughter speaks both American-accented English and French.
In 1942, 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance) denies to the authorities carrying out the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup that her little brother Michel is at home, and locks him in a hidden closet. She tells him to stay there and wait until she returns. She takes the key with her when she and her parents are transported to the Vélodrome d'Hiver
by the Paris Police and French Secret Service where they are held in inhuman conditions. Some French neighbours cheer the roundup while others jeer and say "They will come for you next."
The deportees are transferred to the Beaune-la-Rolande
, the transit deportation detention camp, in squalid conditions and burning heat, in cramped quarters without adequate water or toilet facilities. First the men then the women are deported to the extermination camp in Auschwitz, and the children have to stay after being forcefully and cruelly separated from their mothers by the Paris police. Sarah tries to escape with a friend, Rachel, after noticing a small hole in the ground underneath a fence. A sympathetic Paris police guard, Jacques, whom Sarah wins over by calling by name, and convincingly begs to let them go so she can save her brother, hesitates but finally agrees, and lifts the barbed wire over the hole to let them out as he smiles sympathetically.
After searching for a safe place, exhausted, Sarah and Rachel, fall asleep in a dog house at a village home where they had originally been rebuffed. In the morning, they are discovered by its owner. Realizing who they are, he and his wife decide to help them. Rachel is dying, and when they call attention to the sick girl by calling in a doctor, a skeptical but implicitly sympathetic German officer asks them if they know anything about a second child and warns them of the dire consequences of hiding Jews—but makes no further inquiries. Rachel's body is taken away, while Jules and Genevieve, the elderly couple, hide Sarah in the attic. Days later they take her back to her family's apartment building in Paris. Sneaking past the concierge, Sarah runs up to her apartment, knocking on the door furiously. A boy, twelve years old, answers. She rushes in to her old room, past the boy, and unlocks the cupboard. Horrified by what she finds, she starts screaming hysterically.
After the war, Sarah continues to live with the old couple on the farm, together with their two grandsons, who treat her like their own granddaughter/sister, until she is 18. In letters, the couple describes Sarah's sadness and melancholy. When she turns 18, though, she moves to the United States, hoping to put everything that happened behind her, using the name Dufaure, the surname of the elderly couple. She gets married and has a son, William, although she stops corresponding with Jules and Genevieve soon after being married. When her son is 9, no longer able to handle what happened to Michel —for whose death she blames herself— Sarah commits suicide by driving into the path of a truck, although her son had always been under the impression that her death was an accident.
In the present, the French husband of journalist Julia (Kristin Scott-Thomas) inherits the apartment of his grandparents (his elderly father was the boy who opened the door to Sarah in August of 1942). Having previously done an article on the Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup, Julia finds her interest piqued when she learns that the apartment came into her husband's family at about the time of the Roundup, and she begins to investigate what happened 65 years earlier. Her father-in-law, knowing the back story and wanting to protect his elderly mother (who had been the wife of the couple who took possession of the seized apartment) from knowing the truth, resents Julia's unwelcome prying, but realizes he will have to bring her in on the story to keep control of it, and tells her what he knows. Having got much of the story, she goes on an obsessive quest to find any trace of Sarah, eventually learning (in Brooklyn) of her death and finally locating William (in Italy). She meets with him and asks him for information about his mother, but learns to her surprise that William does not know his mother's history or even that she was a Jew, believing only that she had been a French farm girl. Listening in amazement to what Julia has uncovered, he refuses to believe it, flatly rejecting the story and brusquely dismissing Julia. Later, everything is confirmed by his dying father, who finally tells him the whole secret story of Sarah's background, including what led to his mother's suicide.
Meanwhile Julia has unexpectedly and joyously discovered that she's pregnant, having given up hope of a second child after years of fertility treatments and unsuccessful attempts to conceive, but her husband flatly disagrees that they should have another child at this point in life. He makes it clear that he wants her to have an abortion, saying he is too old even though he cherishes their teenaged daughter, Zoe. She hesitates about getting an abortion, and ultimately keeps the child. Later, having divorced her husband and moved to New York City, she gives birth to a daughter.
William contacts Julia and meets her for lunch and he gives her additional information about his mother. Julia has brought her toddler daughter along to the meeting. William believes that the little girl's name is Lucy, but as it turns out Lucy is her toy giraffe, when her real name is Sarah, which moves William very deeply.
Tatiana de Rosnay
Tatiana de Rosnay, born on September 28, 1961 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, is a French Journalist, writer and screenwriter.-Biography:Tatiana de Rosnay was born on September 28th, 1961 in the suburbs of Paris. She is of English, French and Russian descent. Her father is French scientist Joël de Rosnay,...
and has been critically well-received, currently holding a 73% rating on the film review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
. Although British, Scott-Thomas delivers her English dialogue in an American accent, but for most of the film she speaks fluent French as she is Anglo-French. She has done many Anglo-French movies in French, and received a César Award
César Awards 2011
The 36th Annual César Awards ceremony was held by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma to honor its selection of the best films of 2010 on February 25, 2011. Jodie Foster was the President of the awards...
nomination for her compelling performance in this role. In the movie she is married to a Frenchman and their daughter speaks both American-accented English and French.
Plot
The film develops between the years 1942 and 2009, alternating between the past and the present.In 1942, 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance) denies to the authorities carrying out the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup that her little brother Michel is at home, and locks him in a hidden closet. She tells him to stay there and wait until she returns. She takes the key with her when she and her parents are transported to the Vélodrome d'Hiver
Vélodrome d'hiver
The Vélodrome d'Hiver , colloquially Vel' d'Hiv, was an indoor bicycle racing cycle track and stadium on rue Nélaton, not far from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. As well as track cycling, it was used for ice hockey, wrestling, boxing, roller-skating, circuses, spectaculars, and demonstrations...
by the Paris Police and French Secret Service where they are held in inhuman conditions. Some French neighbours cheer the roundup while others jeer and say "They will come for you next."
The deportees are transferred to the Beaune-la-Rolande
Beaune-la-Rolande
Beaune-la-Rolande is a commune in the Loiret department in north-central France.On 28 November 1870 it was the site of a battle during the Franco-Prussian War, in which the noted French impressionist painter Frédéric Bazille was killed....
, the transit deportation detention camp, in squalid conditions and burning heat, in cramped quarters without adequate water or toilet facilities. First the men then the women are deported to the extermination camp in Auschwitz, and the children have to stay after being forcefully and cruelly separated from their mothers by the Paris police. Sarah tries to escape with a friend, Rachel, after noticing a small hole in the ground underneath a fence. A sympathetic Paris police guard, Jacques, whom Sarah wins over by calling by name, and convincingly begs to let them go so she can save her brother, hesitates but finally agrees, and lifts the barbed wire over the hole to let them out as he smiles sympathetically.
After searching for a safe place, exhausted, Sarah and Rachel, fall asleep in a dog house at a village home where they had originally been rebuffed. In the morning, they are discovered by its owner. Realizing who they are, he and his wife decide to help them. Rachel is dying, and when they call attention to the sick girl by calling in a doctor, a skeptical but implicitly sympathetic German officer asks them if they know anything about a second child and warns them of the dire consequences of hiding Jews—but makes no further inquiries. Rachel's body is taken away, while Jules and Genevieve, the elderly couple, hide Sarah in the attic. Days later they take her back to her family's apartment building in Paris. Sneaking past the concierge, Sarah runs up to her apartment, knocking on the door furiously. A boy, twelve years old, answers. She rushes in to her old room, past the boy, and unlocks the cupboard. Horrified by what she finds, she starts screaming hysterically.
After the war, Sarah continues to live with the old couple on the farm, together with their two grandsons, who treat her like their own granddaughter/sister, until she is 18. In letters, the couple describes Sarah's sadness and melancholy. When she turns 18, though, she moves to the United States, hoping to put everything that happened behind her, using the name Dufaure, the surname of the elderly couple. She gets married and has a son, William, although she stops corresponding with Jules and Genevieve soon after being married. When her son is 9, no longer able to handle what happened to Michel —for whose death she blames herself— Sarah commits suicide by driving into the path of a truck, although her son had always been under the impression that her death was an accident.
In the present, the French husband of journalist Julia (Kristin Scott-Thomas) inherits the apartment of his grandparents (his elderly father was the boy who opened the door to Sarah in August of 1942). Having previously done an article on the Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup, Julia finds her interest piqued when she learns that the apartment came into her husband's family at about the time of the Roundup, and she begins to investigate what happened 65 years earlier. Her father-in-law, knowing the back story and wanting to protect his elderly mother (who had been the wife of the couple who took possession of the seized apartment) from knowing the truth, resents Julia's unwelcome prying, but realizes he will have to bring her in on the story to keep control of it, and tells her what he knows. Having got much of the story, she goes on an obsessive quest to find any trace of Sarah, eventually learning (in Brooklyn) of her death and finally locating William (in Italy). She meets with him and asks him for information about his mother, but learns to her surprise that William does not know his mother's history or even that she was a Jew, believing only that she had been a French farm girl. Listening in amazement to what Julia has uncovered, he refuses to believe it, flatly rejecting the story and brusquely dismissing Julia. Later, everything is confirmed by his dying father, who finally tells him the whole secret story of Sarah's background, including what led to his mother's suicide.
Meanwhile Julia has unexpectedly and joyously discovered that she's pregnant, having given up hope of a second child after years of fertility treatments and unsuccessful attempts to conceive, but her husband flatly disagrees that they should have another child at this point in life. He makes it clear that he wants her to have an abortion, saying he is too old even though he cherishes their teenaged daughter, Zoe. She hesitates about getting an abortion, and ultimately keeps the child. Later, having divorced her husband and moved to New York City, she gives birth to a daughter.
William contacts Julia and meets her for lunch and he gives her additional information about his mother. Julia has brought her toddler daughter along to the meeting. William believes that the little girl's name is Lucy, but as it turns out Lucy is her toy giraffe, when her real name is Sarah, which moves William very deeply.
Cast
- Kristin Scott ThomasKristin Scott ThomasKristin A. Scott Thomas, OBE is an English actress who has also acquired French nationality. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient....
: Julia Jarmond - Natasha Mashkevich : Mrs Starzynski
- Arben Bajraktaraj : Mr Starzynski
- Mélusine Mayance : Young Sarah Starzynski
- Niels ArestrupNiels ArestrupNiels Arestrup is a French actor.Born in Paris into a family of modest means, his father was Danish and his mother was French...
: Jules Dufaure - Dominique Frot : Geneviève Dufaure
- Frédéric PierrotFrédéric PierrotFrédéric Pierrot is a French actor. He has appeared in over 75 films and television shows since 1986. He starred in the film Tell Me I'm Dreaming, which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival....
: Bertrand Tezac - Michel DuchaussoyMichel DuchaussoyMichel Duchaussoy is a French film actor. He has appeared in 130 films since 1962.-Selected filmography:* The Killing Game * The Unfaithful Wife * This Man Must Die * Just Before Nightfall...
: Édouard Tezac - Gisèle Casadesus : the Grandmother
- Aidan QuinnAidan Quinn-Early life:Quinn was born in Chicago, Illinois to Irish parents. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic and raised in Chicago and Rockford, Illinois, as well as in Dublin and Birr, County Offaly in Ireland. His mother, Teresa, was a homemaker, and his father, Michael Quinn, was a professor of...
: William Rainsferd - Maxim Driesen : Young Edouard Tezac
- Xavier Béja : André Tezac
- Céline Caussimon : Vel d'Hiv nurse
- Julie Fournier : Anna, the young lady escaping the Vel d'Hiv
- Jean-Pierre Hutinet : Village doctor
- Jonathan Kerr : Concentration camp police officer
- Matthias Kress : German officer investigating at the farm
- Sarah Ber : Rachel
- Karina Hin : Zoe Tezac
- James Gerard : Mike Bambers
- Charlotte Poutrel : Adult Sarah Starzynski
- Joe Rezwin : Joshua
- Kate Moran : Alexandra
- Paul Mercier : Michel Starzynski
- Serpentine Teyssier : Gardienne d'immeuble
- Simon Eine : Franck Levy
- Paige Barr : Ornella Harris
- Joanna Merlin : Mrs Rainsferd
- George Birt : Richard Rainsferd
- Vinciane Millereau : Nathalie Dufaure
- Sylviane Fraval : Bertrand's mother
- Dan Herzberg : red-haired police officer
- Nancy Tate : Alice
- Frédérick Guillaud : Young Richard Rainsferd
- Maurice Lustyk : Man with violin