Kristin Scott Thomas slips easily between English and French in "Sarah's Key," but what's most affecting about her performance are the silences. She's long been the kind of actress who can speak volumes without a word - you see her intelligence clicking along, as she thinks in character - and here she again reminds us, particularly in a scene when she walks through Paris' Holocaust Memorial, of the eloquence of quiet.
It's a lovely performance in a movie that doesn't quite live up to Scott Thomas' standards.
"Sarah's Key," based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, struggles with a problem it never overcomes: How do you make viewers care about everyday problems when juxtaposed with the horror of the Holocaust?
The film (and the book) uses fictional characters to shed light on a little-known Holocaust story: In Paris in 1942, thousands of Jewish citizens were arrested and held in the stifling Velodrome under appalling conditions for several days, then sent to extermination camps. The arrests were conducted not by Nazis, but by French police. We're shown this in flashbacks, through the eyes of 10-year-old Sarah (Melusine Mayance, in an utterly haunting performance), whose family is arrested - and who's carrying a terrible secret, culminating in a scene so devastating you may have to look away, even though its true horror is not shown.
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Scott Thomas plays Julia, an American journalist married to a Frenchman (Frederic Pierrot) in contemporary Paris. Julia's aghast at the event and at the complicity of her adopted homeland - and, through diligent research, begins to uncover a connection between Sarah and her husband's family. All of this is beautifully played, but it's jarring to see devastating scenes at a death camp interspersed with Julia's tiresome marital problems.
The film often seems weirdly off-kilter - we're in these contemporary scenes, it seems, only because an actress of Scott Thomas' caliber is in them - and you leave "Sarah's Key" both moved and frustrated, by the way its main story too often gets eclipsed by a less-important one.
Review
Sarah's Key
** 1/2
• Rated: PG-13 for thematic material including disturbing situations involving the Holocaust.
Language: In French and English, with English subtitles where necessary.
• Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner.
• Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Mélusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Michel Duchaussoy, Frederic Pierrot, Aidan Quinn.
• Running time: 102 minutes.
