The raid and concentration camp scenes use hand-held camera jitters and fast cross-cutting for dramatic effect, as if the horrific nature of what’s taking place wasn’t enough the first part of the movie (vacillating between present and past) feels as if someone is repeatedly poking us with a stick every 10 minutes. The movie is disturbingly intense, but far from perfect. The journalist gradually discovers that she is much closer to the tragedy than she had realized. Thus begins Julia’s search for Sarah, a woman who, as a 10-year-old, lost her family in the raid under more-than-horrific circumstances (the young Sarah is played by a terrific Mélusine Mayance the adult one by a mysteriously beautiful Charlotte Poutrel). In 1995, French president Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) finally apologized for the French police’s role in the raids, but it came far too late (and he only acknowledged “nearly 10,000” arrests). A puzzling fact, especially considering that the Nazis “documented everything, that’s what they were known for.” During an editorial meeting discussing her upcoming story on the 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup (when more than 13,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied France were detained and sent to Auschwitz), a photographer wonders why there is not a single photograph of those who were arrested and temporarily held at the Vélodrome d’Hivers. Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a present-day American journalist working for a magazine in Paris.
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