Sarah's Key

On Wednesday night Ann and I went to see the film Sarah's Key. It was in French, with subtitles, with some parts in English.
It is a very moving film. The character played by Kristin Scott Thomas is researching the way that Jews were treated in in occupied France in 1942, when she discovers a story centred on the very flat she was about to move into.
As the police call to arrest the male members of the family, her father is away and Sarah protects her younger brother by hiding him in a cupboard. When instead they are all taken away Sarah has to escape so as to free her brother from the cupboard.   We see the story played out in the squalor and chaos of the Velodrome in July 1942, the story that the journalist is investigating.
There are three stories in the film, Sarah as a little girl in 1942 which is very engaging and moving, Sarah as a young woman after the war which I thought was not entirely credible, and the journalist's personal story, which Ann enjoyed the least. I enjoyed Scott Thomas' performance, but thought the other characters were merely there to move the plot along.
The film confronted the way that the French treated the Jews in quite a challenging way, and also portrayed the way families keep secrets, although possibly not so very credibly. It has a feel good ending, but I was not convinced. It is the earlier, 1942 story that is the enduring memory, with all its courage and anguish.
A very moving film.