FILM REVIEW: "Sarah's Key"

Exquisite! The film (in French with English sub-titles) is beautiful. profound, complex and startlingly true. Starring Kristin Scott Thomas and a beautiful child actress who still haunts my memory. It is the story of wartime (WWII) brutality, national betrayal, family, family secrets and the healing power of love and truth. It is complex, with shifting time perspectives and points-of-view, but clearly told. Ah, the French. The land of the novel. They understand the difference between complex and confusing, profound and profane, simple and simplistic. ""Sarah's Key" is all you would want in a nature, grown-up film. I kept thanking God an American hadn't made it for an American audience. Be prepared, however: the truth inherent in the film is unrelenting. It will test you, and it will tire you...but ultimately it will uplift you. Tragedy cleanses. I've always wondered why the French always look tired and drawn...perhaps, like this film, they see too clearly into the truth, the harsh meaninglessness of much of life. Yet they drink, they eat well, they make love obsessively...they consistently find meaning in the harshest of life's dilemmas. No, they don't find meaning...they impose it. Engage! Engage. Spit in death's face; smile in the void. Let laughter and love fill the universe's emptiness. The making of this film is a testament to that philosophical stance. See it. See it. See it.