arts & entertainment
Melusine Mayance as Sarah
in Sarah's Key
Sarah's Key, Tatiana de
Rosnay's popular novel,
comes to the big screen.
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
T
he worthy French film Sarah's Key
has two overriding aims, like the
2007 novel by Tatiana de Rosnay
from which it's adapted.
The first is to expose a generally
unknown — or willfully forgotten —
chapter in France's long, blemished rela-
tionship with its Jewish population.
The other is to connect the Holocaust
to the present in a way that makes it come
alive for contemporary audiences who are,
inevitably, a couple of generations and
thousands of miles removed.
To that end, the film shifts back and
forth between Sarah, a Jewish child in
Paris in 1942, and Julia, an American jour-
nalist in the City of Light 60 years later.
One storyline, however, proves immeasur-
ably more compelling than the other.
Frankly, it's gratifying to report that the
Holocaust-era saga is the primary reason
to see Sarah's Key. The riveting (albeit fic-
tional) wartime events deliver a knockout
emotional punch while the present-day
story dissolves into half-hearted melo-
drama and half-baked contrivance.
On balance, though, the good far out-
weighs the hokum.
At its core, Sarah's Key wants to engage
us in profound moral questions of respon-
sibility and behavior. The most uncom-
fortable probes would seem to be directed
at non-Jews, but the notion of passive
participation in injustice, persecution and
murder is surely relevant to anyone.
In 1942, the Paris police arrested thou-
sands of Jews and confined them for
several frightening days in the Velodrome
d'Hiver, an indoor stadium, before ship-
Dilemmas on page 49
War Brides
Film charts lives of three women
in postwar New Zealand.
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
H
alf an hour into the richly lay-
ered Dutch saga Bride Flight,
you'd never imagine that a
menorah would become the film's most
affecting and enduring symbol.
At that point, we're scarcely aware
there's a Jewish character in this first-
rate romantic drama, which centers on
a group of 20-something Dutch emigres
starting new lives in New Zealand in
1953. Indeed, we soon learn that that
character, a stylish young woman named
Esther, has no interest in being tethered
to a Jewish tradition that, for her, reached
its nadir a decade earlier during the
Holocaust.
Marieke van der Pol's worldly and
wise screenplay beautifully integrates the
Jewish thread into a captivating and over-
whelmingly scenic story of fresh starts,
fraught friendships, concealed parentage
and paths not taken.
The 2008 movie, finally receiving a lim-
ited U.S. theatrical release, is framed by a
present-day reunion of three of the film's
quartet of main characters at the funeral
of the fourth. The heart of the story lies
in how they came to be so intertwined in
the 1950s and early '60s, amid a succes-
sion of fateful and heart-rending choices.
The three women and a man meet on a
KLM airliner racing from London to New
Zealand and carrying a bevy of high-spir-
ited passengers bound for greener pas-
tures. And, of course, love and adventure.
Waldemar Torenstra as Frank and Anna Drijver as Esther In Bride Flight
The dark-haired Esther (Anna Drijver),
an aspiring fashion designer, and her pal
Marjorie (Elise Schaap) chat up Frank
(Waldemar Torenstra), a dapper, hand-
some urbanite primed to take a stab at
farming. (He will ultimately find success
growing grapes and making wine.)
Frank is friendly and charming but is
really attracted to a nervous blonde, Ada
(Karina Smulders), who tells him — after
a passionate kiss during a quick stopover
in Karachi — that her future husband,
War Brides on page 49
July 2$ 2011
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