French drama—This is a tragic Second World War story of an eleven-year-old girl who hides her brother in a secret wall and locks the door to try to save him from the French collaborators with the Nazis, who round up thousands of French Jews and put them in horrible conditions and eventually to death camps in Germany. The little girl goes through tremendous suffering and never sees her mother and father again, who were taken away. I was surprised to learn that the French collaborators (who were police and government officials) were part of the Nazi holocaust to the Jews — something kept very secret, I'm sure, by the French, even though I'm sure it was just the controlling faction of the French government and not the majority of the French government or people, because the French always had an underground movement against Nazi occupation. Sarah does escape the prison as a little girl with the help of a decent French guard but lives a tortured life, which the story unveils. An American-French journalist finds herself in the very room in which Sarah's family was taken, because the journalist's relatives bought the home. The story has many twists and turns, as life often has with people who have a tragic past and have something to hide. Excellent film. Kristin Scott Thomas, Aidan Quinn, Melusine Mayance. French/English/Italian/German/Yiddish with English subtitles.
~Gabriel of Urantia*MPAA = Motion Picture Association of America
*4DFR = An alternative, 4th-Dimensional, rating is supplied by the author of this review
