First Hit: Powerful film that shines light on the French roundup of Jews in 1942.
I was unaware that the French government rounded up Jews and sent them to concentration camps, like Nazi Germany, prior to the invasion of France by Germany.
This is a sad and powerful story of a young girl who locks her very young brother in a closet to save him from being taken away by the soldiers. The family gets taken away and separated, Men from Women and young children from their mothers.
This leaves Sarah with a group of other young girls in the camp. She escapes with the assistance of a soldier and after being nursed to health by a French family, they make their way back to Paris to unlock the closet Sarah locked her brother in. It has been many months and of course the boy is dead. Sarah is affected by the rest of her life over the killing of her brother.
The vehicle for following this story is the research by Julia Jarmond (played by Kristen Scott Thomas) who discovers that her husband’s family owned the home where Sarah lived and locked her brother up. In fact, her and her husband are redecorating the place to move in as their new home.
As the story unfolds Julia becomes distraught at the coincidence of her being pregnant, her husband not wanting the child, and the history of her home. This sad story was extremely well told. Not once did I slip into non-belief.
I was extremely impressed with the choice of actors, especially Melusine Mayance and Charlotte Poutrel as young and adult Sarah respectively. Their shared mannerisms, look, and feel (both physically and energetically) were phenomenal.
Scott Thomas gives a tone and picture perfect performance as the intensely curious reporter that drives depth into her story through empathy. Mayance was fantastic as young Sarah and her scream when she opens the closet will haunt me for weeks. Poutrel was sublime as adult Sarah and had me wanting to reach out and comfort her. All the other actors were great in their roles. Serge Joncour and Gilles Paquet-Brenner wrote a superlative screenplay. And Paquet-Brenner’s direction was top-notch.
Overall: A deeply moving film which hangs on in one’s soul for some time afterward.