Review of Sarah's Key (2010) by Melinda W — 16 Apr 2011

A powerful story, but the adapted screenplay didn't quite manage to translate it from a novel to film. Instead, it felt like a novel on fast-forward, with the journalist's story detailed and meandering and the emotive historical action very rushed.

I haven't read the novel, but I felt as if I were reading alternating chapters of past and present that took time to come together in a meaningful way. The acting was superb, but let down by some very clunky dialogue, sometimes clumsily used as narration and other times patronisingly explaining what is evident to the intelligent viewer.

Despite my criticism, this film succeeds in dramatising an untold and heart-wrenching story of the Holocaust in a relevant and profound way. I'm told that this is also an important film for France, because it acknowledges at least partial responsibility of the French people for the deportation of Jews, yet the film chooses to focus on small acts of human kindness more than it addresses collaboration.