Sarah’s Key begins in Paris during the Vel d’Hiv Roundup of 1942, where a young Jewish girl Sarah (Mélusine Mayance) locks her brother in a closet in order to save him from being sent to Auschwitz. Despite being brought to a transit camp herself, she’s determined to escape and free her sibling. Cut to the present day where American journalist Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas) starts to look into the history of her in-laws’ Parisian flat. Can you predict the denoument inévitable?
Scott Thomas puts in a beautiful performance as always, but Julia simply isn’t a very interesting character, and as the intriguing and heart-wrenching World War II narrative thread is abandoned in favour of Julia’s anaemic hand-wringing over romantic upsets, unplanned pregnancies and second generation post-Holocaust guilt, Sarah’s Key loses its initial momentum. Her investigation into Sarah’s extended family is meant to reveal the traumatic aftershocks of the Holocaust that ripple through generations. But like a ripple pool, the film’s emotional height is reached in the middle of the film, and as it continues on for another hour it becomes significantly less emotionally engaging.

The problem is that while Sarah’s Key> doesn’t exactly twin the pain felt by the victims of the Holocaust with Julia’s modest struggles, it allows her to treat the Holocaust like a self-help tool on her journey to self-actualisation therefore trivialising it to a degree that feels wrong. The violence and horror that befell Jewish families is also questionably sanitised, with the violence happening off-camera so as to not be distasteful.
Sarah’s Key has moments of genuine brilliance, with truly devastating scenes and stunning performances from the young Mayanace and the ever-wonderful Niels Arestrup. But – to these eyes – it also provides both the characters and the audience with an altogether too-tidy ending.