Considering the sheer number of top-quality films Kristen Scott Thomas has starred in, it is surprising that she has not received more awards.
Aside from taking home a BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for 1995's "Four Weddings and a Funeral," she currently has no Oscars decorating her mantlepiece.
"Sarah’s Key" is another of the many tragic and heart-wrenching family-torn-apart stories from the Second World War. A visitor to any European city will reveal that the Holocaust is an inescapable part of history. As you wander around museums, dine in local restaurants and leisurely stroll along the ancient streets, it's impossible not to bump into a memorial, stumble across a spray of bullet holes riddled into the side of a building or even pass someone in the street who doesn’t have a relative with a harrowing tale. The evidence of WWII’s enduring legacy is everywhere.
This film concerns the lesser-known Vel d’Hiv Roundup of French Jews in Paris in 1942. American journalist Julia Jarmond (Scott Thomas) lives in the Parisian city with her husband, Bertrand (Frédéric Pierrot), and has been asked to write an article concerning this particular part of France’s dark history. While Bernard is renovating his family’s apartment, Sarah discovers it was previously owned by a Jewish family — the Starzynskis, who were deported during the war 60 years ago.
Julia’s increasingly intense hunt for the truth and her quest for justice for the Starzynskis' plight brings her face to face with the daughter of the family, 10-year-old Sarah (startlingly good newcomer Melusine Mayance), and a secret that she carried with her to the Winter Velodrome where the Jews were kept and then sent the concentration camp.
Just as the French police come to take her and her family away from their home, she locks her younger brother in a closet and promises to be back as soon as she can. They are taken to the Velodrome where she attempts to give the key to a woman planning an escape but is stopped by her father as he thinks she will not succeed. When the family is deported to Auschwitz, Sarah and her friend Rachel escape with the help of a guard they knew before the war.
After Rachel becomes seriously ill from a life-threatening disease, they seek help from an elderly couple who call a doctor. On discovering she is Jewish he promptly informs the police and they take her away. Luckily Sarah is hidden by a couple who, on hearing the urgency of why she must return home, help to take her back to Paris.
For those unfamiliar with French history, this roundup was part of the French police’s attempt at being autonomous from the German government. They rounded up anyone of Jewish ancestry and transported them to the Vel d’Hiv dome. Any survivors of the horrific conditions in the dome were eventually rounded up and sent on to concentration camps. Like Anne Frank’s story, this part of history is told through the eyes of a young girl, shedding a new light on the events, something that is close to director Gilles Paquet-Brennar. In order to re-create the intense and immersive scene in the Winter Velodrome where the Jews were kept, Paquet-Brennar used the Viencennes in Paris which shares its steel-like structure with the Eiffel Tower. A roof was digitally inserted post-production. All filming is shot from Sarah’s point of view as she moves around the dome, giving the scenes an intense feel and heightened sense of immediacy.
‘Sarah’s Key’ does well to delve into the dark chapter of France’s 20th-century history and balances well the two intertwining stories of women’s empowerment despite moving back and forth between past and present. Scott Thomas is wholly compelling as Julia, who is almost ruthless in her pursuit of the truth no matter how grim it may be. At the same time as she is involved in Sarah’s story, she struggles with the fate of her own unborn child that adds even more layers. Mayance is wonderful as Sarah, despite her young age, and her heartbreaking performance is just as fierce as her veteran co-star.