20/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Lionel Baier delivers an atypical, colourful and high-energy film which sees history crossing paths with the story of an eccentric family in their Parisian apartment in May ‘68

William Lebghil, Michel Blanc, Ethan Chimienti, Dominique Reymond and Aurélien Gabrielli in The Safe House

"There’s no place for sadness here." It’s amidst good humour, framed by a forceful desire for narrative freedom and carried by a hectic pace which is sustained by formal inventiveness based upon a cheeky comic book spirit, that Lionel Baier has set The Safe House [+see also:
interview: Lionel Baier
film profile], an incredibly emancipated adaptation of Christophe Boltanski’s eponymous novel which was unveiled in competition in the 75th Berlinale. But beneath its impulsive exterior which places great emphasis on imagination ("which helps to inject a little of it into life, where it’s sometimes lacking") and faith (which isn’t the same as lying), much like the mind of the nine-year-old child who is at the heart of this story and who exists in "a time-period which seems trapped in an infinite present", the film broaches many serious and intelligent subjects which resonate with the darker pages of Europe’s past (relating to the Second World War), but also with our present, even though the catalyst for the story is the famous month of May in 1968 in Paris.

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"Observe our characters as they move around. History will arrive in just a moment." It’s 3 May 1968 and the narrator sets the tone by way of a voice-over, offering the audience a deal: he’ll share his truth if we accept his romantic and colourful vision of a family living "as if they formed one large body" in an apartment on Rue de Grenelle. Once this understanding is established, we’re introduced to the six main members of this tight-knit group: Grandma (Dominique Reymond), the libertarian bourgeoise, arm-wrestling amateur and writer of books about people neglected by society (whom she interviews in the suburbs in her Citroën Ami 6, "the mobile wing of their apartment"), the gentle general practitioner Grandpa (the late Michel Blanc) who sometimes suffers from uncontrollable fears, linguistics specialist Great Uncle (William Lebghil), budding artist Little Uncle (Aurélien Gabrielli), their ancestor Backcountry (Liliane Rovère) with her memories of Odesa, and the boy (Ethan Chimienti) whose parents allow him to sleep there, because outside in the street the revolutionary events of May ’68 are proliferating and escalating, continually relayed by TV and radio.

Conceived as a playful and joyous experiment ("down with pathos!") which is highly accessible to wider audiences and embellished with an array of daring visual innovations (split screen, shimmering colours, incredibly efficient editing by Pauline Gaillard, etc.), The Safe House plays on temporal overlay in the style of Schrödinger’s Cat ("Are we alive? Are we dead? – We’re together") and on a sense of repetition where the elements repeated aren’t actually similar, to deliver coded, humanist, mirror-effect messages. The filmmaker’s control over the pace, pauses and changes in tempo has the brilliant advantage of helping avoid any potential impression of filmed theatre, though some will doubtless find the film a little dialogue-heavy, not to mention very French (despite the director’s Swiss nationality) for their taste. But Lionel Baier accepts this with endearing impudence, calling for gentle anarchy ("no God or masters") without a trace of arrogance or contempt, paying tribute to Breathless [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Jean-Luc Godard and insisting, as one of the characters slips into the film, that you "never let idiots tell you what you are."

The Safe House was produced by Swiss firm Bande à Part Films in co-production with RTS, SRG SSR, Luxembourg outfit Red Lion and French company Les Films du Poisson. mk2 Films are heading up international sales.

(Translated from French)