Elle s’appelait Sarah (2010) - film review

Julia Jarmond is an American journalist who has been based in France for the past twenty years.  At present, she is researching the horrific Vel d’Hiv incident of 1942, in which thousands of Jews were rounded up by the Nazis and held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris before being deported to concentration camps.  Julia becomes intrigued by the case of one victim of the roundup, a 10-year-old girl named Sarah.  What started out as the subject for an article soon becomes a traumatic personal affair for Julia, one that reveals a long buried family secret...

France’s shameful involvement in the deportation of Jews during the Second World War comes under the spotlight in this compelling drama, based on the best-selling novel by Tatiana De Rosnay.  Elle s’appelait Sarah tackles the same subject that was covered in Roselyne Bosch’s La Rafle (2010), released seven months previously, namely the infamous 1942 roundup of Jews in Paris by the French police.  However, it is a very different kind of film to Bosch’s, not merely depicting historical events but exploring our relationship with the past.  It is a film that reminds us of the necessity for facing up to the horrors of the past, no matter how painful that may be.  Even today, most French people find it hard to accept their country’s complicity in the Nazi Holocaust, and it was only a few decades ago that the Occupation was virtually a taboo subject.   What distinguishes Elle s’appelait Sarah from the recent spate of films about the Holocaust is that it attempts to bridge the past and the present and shows how this terrible episode in human history continues to haunt our collective and individual consciences.  Just why should we feel so emotionally hung up on something that took place seventy years ago and in which none of us played any part?  The answer is almost self-evident after watching this film.

There is little to connect this film with director Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s previous work, which to date has been far from distinguished and pretty variable.  After a promising debut feature Les Jolies choses (2001), Paquet-Brenner has notched up an impressive list of box office and critical failures, including Gomez & Tavarès (2003) and UV (2007).  Elle s’appelait Sarah is an altogether different proposition, a focussed, well-constructed drama that is not only intelligently and sensitively scripted, but also directed with restraint, sincerity and the occasional stylistic flourish (as opposed to the manhandled arty excesses that marred Paquet-Brenner’s previous films).   By skilfully interweaving two parallel story strands - one involving a young girl’s experiences of the 1942 roundup, the other centring on an American journalist determined to know the full story of this girl - the film engages our interest and emotions without resorting to some of the tacky sentimentality and melodramatic contortions that have hampered so many films about the Holocaust.  

What makes the film particularly absorbing is Kristin Scott Thomas’s intense yet beautifully understated performance.  As the central character Julia, a driven woman who is locked into an obsessive quest that threatens to wreck her personal life and career, Thomas provides the film with its robust emotional core, but she also comes to symbolise mankind’s collective guilt for the Holocaust.  As first, Thomas’s globetrotting investigation has a touch of the absurd about it, but as we get to know her character and have a chance to reflect on our own feelings on the Holocaust (prompted by the atrocities we see meted out to Sarah and her family), the film gradually begins to make sense.  Julia’s personal adventure is prompted not by the usual bout of mid-life crisis, but by something far deeper, a natural human reaction to an event that was so appalling that it transcends the barriers of time, space and culture.  The Holocaust is a stain on the fabric of humanity that can never be washed clean, nor should it be allowed to fade.  Julia does what she does because she feels personally involved and must do something to assuage her part of the shared guilt that she has inherited.  Through Kristin Scott Thomas’s arresting performance and some excellent supporting contributions from Niels Arestrup, Frédéric Pierrot and Michel Duchaussoy, Elle s’appelait Sarah is a film that is authentic, deeply moving and thought-provoking -  a sombre meditation on the Holocaust and its consequences for humanity.

© James Travers 2011

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