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Elle S'appelait Sarah (Sarah's Key)

Dominique Frot (Actor), Fr d ric Pierrot (Actor), Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Director) Rated:
PG-13
Format: DVD
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,646 ratings
IMDb7.5/10.0
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November 22, 2011
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Sarah's Key $3.99 $7.99
Format Import, NTSC, Multiple Formats
Contributor Fr d ric Pierrot, Niels Arestrup, Gilles Paquet-Brenner, Michel Duchaussoy, Sarah Ber, Gisele Casadesus, Natasha Mashkevich, Frédéric Pierrot, Dominique Frot, Kristin Scott Thomas, Mélusine Mayance, Aidan Quinn, Stephane Marsil See more
Language French, English
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Product Description

Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner. Starring Frédéric Pierrot, Frederic Pierrot, Dominique Frot.

Product details

  • MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
  • Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.56 x 5.35 x 0.55 inches; 1.44 ounces
  • Director ‏ : ‎ Gilles Paquet-Brenner
  • Media Format ‏ : ‎ Import, NTSC, Multiple Formats
  • Release date ‏ : ‎ November 29, 2011
  • Actors ‏ : ‎ Dominique Frot, Fr d ric Pierrot, Kristin Scott Thomas, Niels Arestrup, Frédéric Pierrot
  • Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English
  • Producers ‏ : ‎ Stephane Marsil
  • Studio ‏ : ‎ Tva Films
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005SOH84O
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,646 ratings

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
1,646 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

P. Blevins
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent but so sad
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2024
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I have read many Holocaust books both fiction and nonfiction in my teaching career. I can truthfully say this is one of the best fiction showing the life of a survivor. It brought both laughter (though little of that) and tears (lots of them). I really love the characters of Julie and especially Zoe. Zoe is simply adorable. The lessons the book taught and the symbols present are amazing. I had known little about the July 16 roundup in Paris, other than it happened. I didn't realize how many children were rounded up in the action and how horrid the conditions were. It was very well written and I hope to read more of her works in the future.

Reading this book after having done 7 more years of Holocaust research and reading made me appreciate this book even more. The author's way of taking the reader into the events of the story and really understanding more of what she is taking about makes the book that much more meaningful.

Having read this again after 9 years, my admiration for Tatiana De Rosnay has only increased. Her use of words and pauses to elicit the feeling of horror and unbelievability in the actions makes the feelings so much deeper. She does an amazing job of making this fiction seem
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Miss Pennyfeather
5.0 out of 5 stars Heart-breaking story of redemption
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2024
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There was so much suffering in this story. But generations later, the heroine in this movie made everything right by doing what was right.
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Teresa M.
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Movie
Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2024
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highly recommend.!!
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Jack E. Levic
4.0 out of 5 stars The Present Confronts the Past
Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2011
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Kristin Scott Thomas one of today's most underrated actresses. This talented actress always brings a strong prescence to any movie. This time the British actress is Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, living in Paris raising a teenager daughter with her French husband.
She and her husband move into an apartment that has been owned by his family since 1942. Julia soon learns that the apartment has a very tragic history.

In 1942, a lively Jewish population lived in the Marais area of Paris. Without warning the French authorities rounded up the Jewish population to be shipped to concentration camps. We step back in time to those fateful days in 1942. Lively
10-year-old Sarah Starzynski played by the remarkable Mélusine Mayance lives with her parents and 4 year old brother in a flat in Marais. We soon learn the tragic meaning of "Sarah's key" and how lives were changed in an instant. Julia becomes obsessed with finding the fate of Sarah and the truth behind how the Jarmond family came to own the apartment.

One can only imagine the millions of stories that were lived out and lost during WWII. Here is one fictionalized story that gets us to think, "could it happen again?" The French authorities willingly deported their Jewish population to certain death. The French citizens are shown taunting their former neighbors as the Jews are being herded away. I did appreciate a scene of humanity as French peasants threw apples over the fences to hungry children. It was a sign of decency and humanity by some good people who could do nothing more than offer some food to the doomed.

Julia's life is changed forever and she is confronted with the past. Kristin Scott Thomas shines in her role as Julia. The tragedy of the meaning of Sarah's key is devastating to watch. The movie is a good study of people trying to survive in horrific times and trying to understand why some people were willing participants in the tragedy.

The movie touches on a general theme that we have seen over and over again. The tragic past is being confronted. The significance of Sarah's key adds a twist to the story. I felt Sarah's struggle and story was enough for a while film without the present day story. Of course, the present say story would have had more power if we knew more about the Jarmond family during the war.
8 people found this helpful
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Chris Finklein
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful rendition of a great book into a touching movie
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2011
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After reading an amazing book I had doubts about the movie but I was not disappointed. This is a story about how the French dealt with the Jewish problem during the ravages of WW II. There has not been a great deal written or revealed about how the French acted so I was especially curious because I always thought the horrors were driven by the Germans pretty much. They forced their will onto other countries who didn't want to cooperate with the elimination of the Jews. However, there was a large portion of the French police and population who were equally as atrocious as were the Germans themselves.

This isn't a gory, bloody movie. Many of the scenes you would anticipate being difficult to watch are but the degree of reality is sensored somewhat. What happens is left to the imagination rather than being portrayed in full blown horror.

The story deals in flashback but essentially it devotes a major portion to what happens AFTER the critical events. It's a study in relationships and how the past has an intriguing way of penetrating the present. Kristin Scott Thomas holds the entire story line together with her capable interpretation and illuminates the story. There are really no surprises but the details unfold to underscore how easily lives from different generations affect each other. I had read the book a couple years ago and had forgotten some of the minor characters. As in many Hollywood renditions I do think a few liberties were taken in order for the story to fall into place but it is very well done. If you have ever watched a movie and when the end is reached you feel a sense of satisfaction then this film qualifies. The story is a sad one but there is a sort of redemption of sorts not to whitewash the impact but to reassure. I have always found the Holocaust impossible to imagine but it happened. This movie is the kind that reflects man's inhumanity to man but it concludes in a bit of triumph rather than complete devastation. On the proverbial scale of 1 to 10, "Sarah's Key" earns a definite 8.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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cesar baca perez
5.0 out of 5 stars Interésante
Reviewed in Spain on February 25, 2024
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Una historia superinteresante y muy humana, que toca el corazón.
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Amandine
5.0 out of 5 stars Parfait
Reviewed in France on November 17, 2023
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Envoie rapide et propre
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JoyPT
5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful story that will stay with you
Reviewed in Canada on November 25, 2020
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Wonderful, heart wrenching film from the superb book by Tatiana de Rosnay. Thoroughly recommend them both. Kristen Scott Thomas plays another interesting and intelligent character. The young actress that plays Sarah is anazing. Such a powerful story set within a true atrocity in France.
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J.A.Hallbauer ;Doc Halliday
5.0 out of 5 stars Eine tragische Überlebende
Reviewed in Germany on February 15, 2016
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Giles Paquet-Brenner inszenierte diesen 2010 erschienenen Film, der abwechselnd im Paris des Kriegsjahres 1942 und der Jetztzeit 2009 spielt.
!942 werden mit Kolllaboration von Franzosen 20.000Juden in Paris aus ihren Wohnungen geholt und in KZs transportiert. Darunter ist auch die Familie Starzynski: Eltern, die etwa 10jährihe Sarah (Mélusine Mayance) und ihr kleinerer Bruder, den Sarah noch schnell im tapezierten Wandschrank verstecken kann und später holen will. Es ist nicht zu viel gespoilert, das das nicht passiert, die Juden werden zunächst im Wintervelodrom zusammengetrieben, unter unvorstellbaren hygienischen Verhältnissen, dann in Lager verbracht, Sarah kann fliehen und findet für denn Rest der Kriegszeit Unterschlupf bei einer Familie auf dem Lande, einem älteren kinderlosen Ehepaar. Nach Kriegsende findet Sarah ihren Bruder in seinem Versteck, sie wandert nach Amerika aus, ihre Spur verliert sich.

Die Journalistin Julia Jarmand (Kristin Scott-Thomas)) will einen Artikel über das Thema verfassen und stößt auf die Tatsache, dass das Haus der Juden im Besitz der Familie ihres Verlobten ist. Er will nach Umbauarbeiten da einziehen, Julia ist der Gedanke daran zunehmend unvorstellbar, zu Spannungen kommt es auch wegen der nicht mehr erwarteten Schwangerschaft der über 40jährigen Frau, die schon eine Tochter im Teenageralter hat. Sie treibt nicht ab, in Zusammenarbeit mit einer Organisation, die jedem Gesicht (Fotos von verschleppten Juden) einen Namen geben will, kommt sie der tarurigen Geschichte und Sarah auf die Spur und kann einem Nachfahren Sarah und den Bruder als verstorbene Vorfahren nahebringen.

Der Film erzählt das Schicksal eines Opfers des Holocaust, das zwar den Krieg überlebte, aber für imer in tiefer Trauer gefangen blieb, ein Schicksal, das Sarah mit Tausenden von Überlebenden teilte. Das großartige Spiel der Kristin Scott-Thomas und der jungen Mélusine Mayance sind erschütternd, glaubhaft, nie in billige Gefühlsduselei abgleitend. Die englische Schauspielerin mit französischer Staatsbürgerschaft, in beiden Ländern geadelt, sowie die junge Darstellerin ziehenn uns in ihren Bann, erschütternd die Szenen im Velodrome., als ihr klargemacht wird, was sie in bester Absicht angerichtet hat, und als der Bruder in seinem Versteck gefunden wird.
Die Kritik, dass die Geschichte der Journalistin überflüssig sei und vielleicht nur dazu diente, uns von dem grausigen Erleben von Sarah eine Pause zu gönnen, teile ich nicht. Der Holocaust hat Auswirkungen bis in die heutige Zeit, die Bemühungen, den Gesichtern vonn Opfern Namen zu geben und etwas über ihr definitives Schicksal herauszufinden, ist aller Ehre wert und kann auch heute noch den Nachkommen die verlorenen Vorfahren ein Stückchen wiederbringen.

Ein berührender und großartig gespielter Film, der mir 5 Sterne wert ist.

Doc Halliday
14 people found this helpful
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Lady Fancifull
5.0 out of 5 stars Sensitively handled film about a dreadful time
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 5, 2011
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I haven't read the book from which this film was adapted, so am purely assessing my reaction to the movie itself. Based around a 'hidden' piece of French history - the infamous events of July 1942 in Paris, the Vel d'Hiv round-up and processing of Jews to the camps, carried out not by the Germans, but the French themselves, the film is interesting in that it abjures easy black and white conclusions. The central character, an American journalist in the present day, married to a Frenchman, and resident in Paris, replies to a young American colleague's condemnation of those war-time Parisians 'And what would you have done at that time?' - recognising that the real horror is how the possibility for evil acts belongs not 'out there' but is latent in each of us. The star of this film,the bank-roller, is Kristin Scott-Thomas, and she is magnificent - but each of the actors, whether English or French speaking, delivers truthful, intense and interesting performances.

Part of the challenge and fascination of the movie lies in the constant shifting time-scale, from 1940's Paris to 60 years later, where Scott-Thomas's character, with moral decisions of her own to face, gets drawn into an investigation from the past, the events of which impinge directly on her life in present day, as her husband's family flat was 'acquired' after the expulsion of the Jews. The sense of rugs being pulled from under feet, the insecurity of the present, and how the past and the present are tied to each other - and yet strange to each other, is intensified by the two-languages of the movie - partly in English, partly in French, so there is always the sense of Scott-Thomas trying to straddle the divides of language and culture, to communicate across time and space.

The DVD extras, in the form of a 'making of the film' documentary was, for the most part, equally interesting. Several of the actors and extras had histories of their own - either personal, or family survivors of the Shoah - including the director. One particularly chilling moment was with a conversation with a group of extras, most young, but with one elderly woman. The young women are laughing, as the old woman says IF she had ever married she would have had a grand-daughter like one of the young girls. They laugh,saying were you never married, never? And the woman says 'no - who could I marry, I couldn't marry a Christian, and there were no Jews left' The actors playing the parents of the central young girl (Melusine Mayance, an extraordinary performance) also brought their own personal sensibilities into their perfcrmances, as people who had been affected by later European 'ethnic cleansings' and the extreme effects of divisive nationalism.

The level of performances, whether from established actors, unknowns or extras, is high. There is a sense that most people involved felt they were doing something more important than just making another film. Though 'Sarah's story' is a fiction, it is representative of many real, horrific stories, belonging to people whose own stories died with them, or with those who survived, and whose descendants may still carry deep scars
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