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2011, 07-12:
Review of film: “SARAH’S KEY” + Q&A with Director GILLES PAQUET-BRENNER
The FILM itself -- Originally titled “ELLE S’APPELAIT SARAH”
Thru the years, the public has gotten acquainted with a number of stories about the HOLOCAUST, such as “SCHINDLER’S LIST”...
... Most of those narratives mainly involve the direct German NAZI actions which led to all the sad problems. TATIANA de ROSNAY wrote a book called “SARAH’S KEY” about the comparatively-unfamiliar FRENCH complicity with sending Jews off to concentration camps...
... Reportedly, it took 2 years before she found a publisher for her story (a novel based on some true events). But, since it was published, it has been on the New York Times’ BEST SELLERS list for more than 2 years...
... French director GILLES PAQUET-BRENNER made a MOVIE of the story, & the CHICAGO INT’L FILM FESTIVAL hosted an ADVANCE SCREENING of the film (which is scheduled to open in limited markets as of July 22nd)...
... As our story starts, 8-or-so years old Sarah Starzynski (MÉLUSINE MAYANCE) is happily playing with her beloved younger brother Michel (PAUL MERCIER) on their bed in the Marais area of Paris, France in early 1942 (around 2 years after the Nazis had invaded France & taken control of the area)..
... Not long after that, there’s an insistent knock on their apartment door at an unusual time of nite. Her mother hesitated answering it, but, hearing it was the POLICE, she apprehensively opened the door...
... Sensing a possible problem (due to her mother’s fearfulness & all when they demanded that the family come with them), very self-aware Mélusine went to her bedroom...
... There, she quietly told her brother to quickly get in the “camouflaged” built-in CLOSET (covered by wallpaper) & be silent & stay in there until she came to get him later. She locked the closet door with a KEY, which she then hid on her body...
... The French policeman (along with a “supervisor” who may have been a Nazi collaborator or the like) then took Mélusine, her 30-year-old mother Rywka (NATASHA MASKEVYCH) & eventually her 32-year-old father Wladyslaw (ARBEN BAJRAKTARAJ) into custody...
... Along with around 13,000 other Jews, on July 16-17 of 1942, they were herded into what had been an old VELODROME (bike-racing oval track) building, which had almost no proper sanitation or water or food or beds, thus forcing people to live in very inhuman conditions (needing to use the floors for toilets & the like)...
... While Mélusine’s mother seemed to be fairly “sensible” in general, her father seemed to be very UNREALISTIC & “agitated” in his behavior...
... Mélusine wisely tried to encourage her folks to follow the urgings of another young woman prisoner who’d devised a plan to get AWAY from the building (by feigning sickness & the like)...
... Mélusine wanted to at least give the woman the KEY she was holding to the closet where her brother was (to try to RELEASE him)-- but her parents WOULDN’T LET her do that...
... The young woman got away-- but Mélusine & her parents soon joined many thousands of other Jews in being sent to “RELOCATION” holding camps...
... Mélusine was very UPSET in the camp... It was a deeply terrifying area, & became more so as the men (like her father) were SEPARATED from the women & children...
... Things became even more frantic & harrowing when the children were soon taken away from the MOTHERS...
... Comparatively “sensible” compared to most other kids her age, Mélusine did what she could to get FOOD to eat & the like... She even devised a plan to try to ESCAPE by digging under a poorly-attached wire fence...
... Getting a bigger girl to join her, Mélusine cleverly had them wear many layers of clothes so as to not get cut on the barbed-type wire...
... She even got a comparatively-friendly French GUARD to help them at one point (by showing him her KEY & explaining what had happened at her apartment)...
... After escaping thru the fence, the two girls ran thru a large field near the prison camp, & tried to find someone who’d help them... But, the bigger girl grew quite ILL from their running & all...
... The local population was generally AFRAID to get involved with them, worried that the authorities would PUNISH them for any complicity in an attempted escape...
... But, due to Mélusine’s persistence, she finally got an elderly FARMER named Jules Dufaure (NIELS ARESTRUP) to take pity on her & try to help out with food & shelter...
... After the larger girl died, Niels & his wife risked a lot to help Mélusine live with them thru the War years...
... In time, the film switches to “MODERN” times in Paris... A woman named Julia Jarmond (KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS) is with her partner, Bertrand Tezac (FRÉDÉRIC PIERROT), talking about renovations on what had been the apartment of his PARENTS since the war-time years...
... They visit his ill mother in the hospital, & she speaks of the NICE times she’d had in the apartment in the old Marais area which she’s no longer physically able to live in...
... Kristin is a writer for a sort of news magazine, and her boss talks about plans for her to take the lead in writing a lengthy article on the WORLD WAR II actions against Jews by French authorities operating under the guidance of the NAZIS...
... He explains to her (& her subordinates) how there were around 73,000 Jews sent to German-run Concentration camps by the French. Kristin & her associates are stunned by the news, & amazed at how there’d been so little PUBLICITY about such collaboration...
... When a discussion comes up about the Velodrome incident (the “Vel’ d’Hiv” roundup referred to previously), the publisher explains how little is “seen” about the matter & affiliated situations because, while the Germans tended to “DOCUMENT” everything in great detail, the French authorities tended to do the OPPOSITE...
... At one point, Kristin works to INVESTIGATE things concerning the article she was working on...
... Ironically, the old Velodrome was TORN DOWN & replaced by a fancy building housing the French Ministry of the INTERIOR-- the same basic agency involved in RUNNING the Velodrome & affiliated harmful deportation proceedings during the War...
... It wasn’t until July 17, 1995 (around 53 years after the event) that the French government, under President Jacques Chirac, finally SPOKE on the subject of the COMPLICITY of the French VICHY regime in working with the Nazis re DEPORTING Jews to Nazi-run concentration camps...
... Seemingly after that acknowledgment, a Holocaust MEMORIAL was opened in the old Marais area of Paris, which KRISTIN visits so she can view the plaques with names of those who were deported...
... Since the apartment her partner Frédéric is renovating is IN the Marais area, & his parents had LIVED in it from World War II on, Kristin begins to wonder how it was that his folks had GOTTEN such a residence at such a difficult time...
... Eventually, Kristin talks to her partner’s FATHER, Édouard (MICHEL DUCHAUSSOY). He admits that (per his own father) the space had become available after some DEPORTATIONS had occurred in the area...
... Kristin starts to investigate things FURTHER concerning the apartment in question... She learns it had been the residence of the Jewish Starzynski family, which consisted of a mother, father & 2 children [including Mélusine], who were seemingly forcibly REMOVED from the place during the War...
... But, in going thru the old records she’d found, she’s shown an old PHOTO of Sarah (Mélusine)...
... Yet, Kristin finds that the deportation records show just Sarah’s mother & father being sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp [as shown below]. She thus becomes anxious about what ever happened to their 2 CHILDREN...
... At one point, Kristin learns about the old wallpapered walls in Sarah’s old home-- the SAME wallpaper her partner was trying to REMOVE in the renovations to his parent’s old home there... She works to find out MORE about the “story” behind Sarah’s (Mélusine’s) life...
... In time, she CONFRONTS her partner’s father Michel about the “history” behind the apartment... He admits how HE was the one who (as a child) opened the CLOSET where Mélusine had told her younger brother to hide...
... What he reports deeply UPSETS Kristen, &, although her partner Frédéric (Michel’s son) DIDN’T KNOW the “background”, that sets up a “WEDGE” between her & Frédéric...
... Kristin tries to track down what “HAPPENED” to Mélusine AFTER she found shelter at the farmhouse...
... That eventually leads her to NEW YORK, where she finds some relatives of Mélusine, & that eventually leads her to ITALY where she finds a SON of Mélusine named William Rainsferd (AIDAN QUINN)...
... Kristin shows Aidan some old PHOTOS of his mother, & tells him a number of things that SHOCK him about his mother...
... What appalling news had Kristin learned from Frédéric’s FATHER about Mélusine’s old apartment, & what effect did that have on their RELATIONSHIP?...
... What had Mélusine “DONE” after LEAVING the home of the farmers who’d rescued her during World War II?... What unexpected thing “HAPPENED” to her in the U.S.?...
... What does AIDAN learn that shocks him?...
... This is an unusual, heartbreaking & HAUNTING story about the sad depth of man’s INHUMANITY to man. It’s a piece of history generally “UNKNOWN” to most of the populace, & it’s BEAUTIFULLY (& fairly plainly) told...
... It features consistently fine acting by the ensemble (& especially exceptional by KRISTIN & MÉLUSINE). It’s an important, THOUGHT-provoking story, & I highly recommend it with a rating of 8.5 out of 10 stars...
(o_
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Q&A with Director GILLES PAQUET-BRENNER
After the film, the audience was very pleased to be able to have a QUESTION & ANSWER session with the Director of the film, GILLES PAQUET-BRENNER, who had literally JUST ARRIVED for his first-ever visit to Chicago (& who at one point apologized for not being more clear-speaking due to his long trip)...
... Host of the event was movie reviewer Mr. J.R. JONES from the CHICAGO READER publication... Early in the talk, Gilles spoke of how, to him, the movie shows in part “the hope of what a person... can BECOME”, even when life initially proves very difficult...
... Further, Gilles offered his thought that, in the French perspective, “I think this movie was NEEDED—”, to help the public “reconcile” with what “collaboration” things were really done by some French people when the Nazis were in power...
... He feels, it helps shows the “CONSEQUENCES of what happened” at that time. The story had resonated with him because, his own mother had LOST her FATHER in the Holocaust...
... When asked, Gilles said, one of the most difficult scenes to film was the group congregated in the filth of the Velodrome stadium... But, while that was “demanding”, the hardest scene was probably the one where the MOTHERS were SEPARATED from their children...
... To a question asked, Gilles said no, the Velodrome of that period is NOT there in Paris anymore... As Kristin says briefly in the film, a plaque about it is located maybe 100 feet or so away from the original site...
... He felt that was done since the government clearly felt having it where the Ministry of the INTERIOR was built on the original site didn’t “LOOK” too good, given the “irony” of the situation...
... As to the Velodrome scene in the film, he’d used some CGI in filming that, because “I wanted to make it very REAL” for the audience... He added, “I wanted this to be very, very ‘IMMERSIVE’...”
... In answering another question, Gilles said yes, the film HAS opened in FRANCE, where it got a very GOOD reception...
... One of the results seen from that is the way today’s “teenagers CAN’T BELIEVE it HAPPENED in France—”, since, for the most part, people today don’t care what a person’s religion is, & it’s hard for them to grasp people could be so EVIL towards others because their religion might be DIFFERENT than the majority’s...
... He feels that, partly due to the way the government worked to “COVER-UP” the collaboration situation for so long, “We didn’t know it was that BAD—”, & the story shines light on a difficult-to-accept truth...
... A lady in the audience said, she’d been to Paris before, & didn’t KNOW there was a HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL there...
... Gilles said yes, as a “Shoah” type memorial, it’s been located in the old MARAIS section for some time-- & his scene with Kristin walking among its plaques was the 1st to ever be allowed to SHOOT there...
... He added the information that, she purposely stops by a plaque that has his own GRANDFATHER’S NAME inscribed as one of those who’d died in the Holocaust (as one of the 73,000 French people sent away to perish in German Concentration camps)...
... A lady in the audience wondered if he felt his film had increased general AWARENESS of the situation of what had happened in the wartime. He felt, it HAD done that, yes, in part due to articles & commentaries that had been written due to added MEDIA attention once the film was to open...
... A lady named Trisha observed from the audience that she’d found his movie to be “phenomenal”, which he appreciated... To a question, he said, yes, he’d read the BOOK on which the story is based-- & “fell in love” with it well BEFORE the book became a worldwide marvel...
... He said, “Sarah’s” story is a work of FICTION— but, “it’s a patchwork of TRUE stories... based on solid, real FACTS—” about the times it covers...
... Another lady in the audience commented, “You really succeeded in IMMERSING the audience” in the story...
... She added that, she herself was TAKEN from her parents [by the Nazis] in BRUSSELS [Belgium] during the 2nd World War, & felt, “You’re telling it UNIQUELY” & with accuracy about how things really were for some people at the time...
... Gilles smiled, & sincerely stated that, he much APPRECIATED that remark-- & added a smiling comment, that, tho this was his 1st-ever visit here, “I [already] LIKE Chicago now!...”
... When asked, Gilles was happy to discuss his CASTING process. He said, Kristin, tho English by birth, is someone who’s LIVED in Paris for like 25 years now. She’s married to a French man, they have 2 French children (so, the overall story could quite “resonate” with her)...
... A man involved with the production had worked with her in the past, & in-effect put the project in “front” of her. Gilles flew to meet her in New York, & he was very pleased that she said YES the very 1st day the role was offered to her. He felt she was PERFECT for the role...
... He spoke of having listened to a certain French person named Françoise since he was like 7 years old...
... As to young Sarah played by MÉLUSINE, he feels that, “She’s a REAL ACTRESS—”, even as young as she is. Further, his feeling is, “Thank God she existed—!” & was brought to his attention, because, the film couldn’t have been a SUCCESS as it was without her exceptional perceptive work!...
... When asked, Gilles spoke of his process on his work in ADAPTING de Rosnay’s original novel to make the screenplay. He said, at times, it was a “struggle” [partly re keeping true to the novel & all]. He worked with a friend [Serge Joncour] in writing it as a film, & that took them a few months of work...
... Since (as Gilles said), “the book is very WELL-PLOTTED”, the gist of it was already “there”. It took time to decide just where to change & cut certain things to make a smooth-flowing FILM of it...
... They spent a good deal of time trying to keep the movie “fluid” in how it dealt with 2 different specific periods of TIME (the Wartime years & then the modern period where Kristin writes her article about Sarah & the Wartime events)...
... Since he in time became “a friend with the author of the BOOK”, overall, the adaptation work was “NOT very complicated”...
... A person in the audience stated that they’d heard there was a very large MUSLIM population in France that supposedly “put pressure on the government to NOT teach [about] the Holocaust”, & wanted Gilles to COMMENT on that...
... Gilles said, that is NOT an accurate statement: “France is NOT a very anti-semitic country... You don’t DEFINE yourself by RELIGION... We don’t CARE—” about a person’s religion in the France of today...
... He went on to say that, there are certainly some communities (such as in the suburbs of Paris & elsewhere) that are highly populated by MUSLIMS, & some of those may be “manipulated” by people with a personal “AGENDA” on various subjects...
... But, in today’s France, “If you make an anti-semitic remark, you can go to JAIL—” for doing that... So, people are careful in how they speak & treat others...
... Gilles spoke some more about how his family used to be Jews in GERMANY... He related how he learned his grandfather (his mother’s dad) who was killed in the Holocaust died unusually QUICKLY (only like 2 days) after arriving in a Concentration Camp...
... Since that grandfather was a comparatively strong man who was just in his 30’s, Gilles wondered WHY he hadn’t “lasted” far longer there... But, his mother didn’t like TALKING much about the situation of her dad...
... Talking to various other people, Gilles learned that his grampa had carried a type of POISON with him to the Camp...
... Thus, that was his basis for Gilles’ idea of having a male character in the MOVIE who says he’s going to control the end of his own life, who then refers to a large RING he’s wearing which seemingly CONTAINS a type of poison!...
... A lady in the audience commented that, she felt this was “one of the most BEAUTIFUL movies” she’d ever seen, with “wonderful transitions”, & she’d found it “even better than the BOOK!”... Gilles was very TOUCHED by that comment...
... When asked, Gilles said, the budget for the film was like 10 million Euros (or, around $ 14 million)... In Europe -- like most places --, “people don’t ‘line-up’ to GIVE you money!” to make films... So, having Kristin attached to it HELPED a lot...
... He said that, the film would open in the U.S. on July 29th in limited markets... Besides France, it had also been shown in HOLLAND [which has a long tradition of being incensed at the Nazi treatment of THEIR citizens during World War II-- witness the Anne Frank story & the like], &, it was very SUCCESSFUL in its showing there...
... J.R. & Gilles THANKED the audience for their attending tonite’s film & also the Q&A...
... After the main talk, I myself talked to Gilles a bit. To my asking, he said, after the scriptwriting work, the actual FILMING took from like July thru December of 2009...
... When I wondered about any possible FUTURE work we could expect from him, he revealed that he was visiting Chicago especially to talk to GILLIAN FLYNN about her [Edgar-nominated] novel “DARK PLACES” [which is a New York Times Bestseller that was published 07-10-08]...
... He said, it’s an “American MYSTERY” (crime thriller) story [about the “SATAN SACRIFICE OF KINNAKEE, KANSAS” regarding a murder of a mother & 2 girls] & that book [which has 2 family members left alive] will be discussed with Gillian as to being the NEXT FILM he will make...
... I complimented Gilles on his fine work, & wished him WELL with his projects (which he thanked me for)...
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(o_
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My interest started to dwindle in the second half of the book, as it focuses more on Julia's vacillation regarding her pregnancy and her marriage, even as she puts the latter more at risk with her obsession over Sarah's story. The author seems to have a bit of difficulty justifying this obsession as misplaced guilt, and I found this to be somewhat of a flaw in the plot. Still, as historical fiction, it's a piece of history that begs to be told, and the author doesn't try to whitewash or justify the fear and apathy that produced such dire consequences.
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