Review of Sarah's Key (2010) by Mike M — 09 Jul 2011

Makes some attempt to recreate a history that isn't altogether pretty... mitigating against that is the prevailing soapiness of those wraparound scenes in which the journalist wrestles with the idea of having a late-in-life baby; indeed, making the heroine American in the first place feels like a shameless sop to non-Francophile audiences.

(Are there no French journalists investigating the Vichy legacy? It's not as though Scott Thomas doesn't speak the lingo.) I was also ambivalent about the way the flashbacks adopt a child's-eye view of the round-up, which effectively reduces the drama to an extended game of hide-and-seek - shades of that odd Miramax version of "The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas" here.

The noble aim may have been to educate a younger generation - like the newspaper's clueless junior reporters - to whom the Val d'Hiv means nothing, but "Sarah's Key" gets glossier and more resistible as it goes on, and only Vichy-centric sensitivity could account for the fuss it apparently caused in its native land.

British viewers may find it nothing too groundbreaking: were it not for the subtitles, this could easily go out on ITV prime-time.