With his Berlinale competition contribution “The Safe House“The Swiss filmmaker Lionel Baier is trying on several things with which the cinema traditionally has its difficulties. On the one hand there is the literature adaptation. It has always existed and will also exist, as long as the cinema exists – including the pitfalls that traditionally brings with it. However, Baier in “La Cache” (= “Das hiding”), as the film is called according to the novel by Christophe Boltanski, is consistent – after all, the events of the film are dealt with in the template in just one sentence.
In contrast to the book template, which tells comprehensively from Boltanski's life and his major intellectual Jewish family in Paris Rue de Grenelle, Baier focuses on a single historical moment. In May 1968, a time of great social upheavals, in the course of which students and workers come together to form street protests that have been reformed by the authoritarian university system and personal freedoms were fought, the life of five -year -old Christophe (Ethan Chimienti) is particularly evident in the interiors of the Extensive old building in the downtown Paris. Books over books pile up on the high walls, while from the premises of his great grandmother from Odessa, all of whom only call Arrière-Pays (in German: hinterland), the sounds of Prokofjews sound.
In “Belfast” a lot is much better successful
The other difficulty with which Baier consciously takes up here is the challenge of making the importance of a historical moment for the audience of another era. The persistent disruption, which came to the protests in 1968, is contrasted with the child's perspective. Anyone who now listens to the familiarity of this premise is not without reason that Kenneth Branagh had already tried a similarly designed story with his “Belfast”, which was located in the middle of the civil war -like Northern Ireland conflict – and at least won an Oscar for the best script.
Not completely unlike Branagh also mix in the script at Baier, so that “The Safe House” should be regarded even more as an adaptation as a fictionalized review. An approach that is only possible because the biographies of Baier and Boltanski have some parallels, such as intergenerational migrant experience that originated in both cases in the Ukrainian city of Odessa.
While the student protests cook outside, the extended family of the five -year -old protagonist feels relatively safe in her apartment.
There has always been talk of the grandmother's homeland since the Christophe figure in the world. For the five -year -old, she always existed as an idea, has remained virtually, and thus offers the opposite point for the title -giving “safe house”, the refuge of the upper middle class. The fact that the apartment is located in Rue de Grenelle of all places, however, acts like a small historical echo, significant improvements in the working conditions in 1968 were unionized.
In an early scene, however, it becomes clear in an early scene that in Christophe's family, however, when we accompany the family, how they accompany the family in the middle of political turbulence to protest with posters for a theater Perform one of his uncle overlooked. The political and private, society and its illustration – be it in sociology, in art or in linguistics – are tried to intertwine in a playful way.
None of the characters are really close
The playful, on the one hand, comes through the use of a voice over that draws attention to the complicity of the narrative early on, after all, this is the story of a five-year-old who later wrote a novel about the events shown to us We are now filming. If you believe in things, then they would also exist – at least in a certain way, Christophe hears it from his grandfather (Michel Blanc).
But as well as this may be meant, director Baier does not want to succeed in keeping the many threads in its history together. Not least because he doesn't get her right. Neither the inner processes of the Ashkenazic family (apart from a pack of Matzah, which we see on the dining table, this aspect remains in the realm of claim), nor the political conflicts, nor the internal -family thinking currents find an interesting equivalent here. At the same time, the top of the point that the film attributes to the young Christophe does not want to develop into a real character.
Self -hedged gimmicks
In this way we not only stay on the topics of the film, but also to his characters. Baier's cinematic idea to approve one or the other prank with the image backgrounds, there is less than meta-referential sharpness, but rather underlines his helplessness. Quite as if the lack of motivic or political foundation should be made up for by formal gimmicks.
The result is digestible Arthouse cinema, which tries to work out the Vichy period, which was still completely repressed at this point, through the unbroken continuity lines between the Nazi era and the presence of 1968. The level at which this happens-with anti-Semitic neighbors on the property fence, a brief attitude of the “Schindler” company insignia in the subway, a parallel education between the French riot police CRS and the SS, including a hidden French president among the home Steps-are unworthy of a Berlinale competition film.
Conclusion: Although created as a multi-layered examination of Jewish identity and political upheavals, Lionel Baier's “The Safe House” ultimately only provides formulaous, dusty arthouse cinema with superficial historical view.
We saw “The Safe House” as part of the Berlinale 2025, where it was shown as part of the official competition.