Nostalgia Lionel Baiera

The turbulent events of May 1968. They never looked more optimistic and sentimental than in A safe house (Cache), a retro family drama set up in a labyrinth Paris apartment, while the surrounding streets abound in social unrest.

Based on the Christophe novel Boltan awards 2015, the latest feature of the Swiss writer Lionel Baiera (Continental drift (south)) is soaked in nostalgia and visual vibrations, even if there is a darker insidious passage through the plot. With a few great homage to Jean-Luc Godard, among other nods epochs, the movie plays more like a historic pastic than the original material. It achieves some soft emotional blows to the end, but otherwise he feels like a lesser trip in a great time.

The author of Boltan is the nephew of famous artist Christian Boltanski, known for his spoiled installations made up of metal boxes, archival photographs and documents intended to remember the trauma of World War I and the Holocaust. These traumas are becoming increasingly present in the story of a Jewish family, astonished indoors, while Paris is wild with the clutter of May ’68, but they never give Baier’s film the necessary level of gravity.

The family in question is close and love, although they are quite arguing about politics, which takes their lives after the students from Sorbonne hit the streets to invite President Charles de Gaulle’s resignation. The protests also leave an unnamed granddaughter of the family (charming newcomer Ethan Chimieti) stuck in their left bank apartment, while his parents join the ranks of demonstrants.

Through the boy’s pov we cheer into a narrative that mostly focused on his grandfather (French star Michel Blanc, who died after the movie was shot), a dedicated Jewish doctor whose own mother (Liliane Rovère) still lives in the room up, telling stories about her For days, they celebrate as a ballet dancer in Russia before the revolution. The household also includes grandmother (Dominique Reymond), who writes sociological novels about the workers’ class, and a couple of uncle (Aurélien Gabrielli) who tries to make him an artist, apparently based on Boltanski, another (William Lebghill) who teaches linguistics, impressing students with their intellectual playing words.

There are a lot of such a word game in A safe houseTo such an extent that the film can seem as a caricature of overrated, constantly nibbling on the Parisians shouting for social changes, but too egocentric and comfortable in their bourgeois lifestyle to do anything drastically about it. It is unclear whether Baier, or a novel is in the matter, is a direct ridicule of them or playfully criticizing them – in any case, satire never runs very deep. Like Michel Hazanavici ‘ Godard my loveAlso set up during May ’68., French chaotic history feels like a colorful backdrop for comedy, with lots of vintage costumes, old cars and decorations with a sepia on it.

Godard also appears in several famous quotes, whether acting are members who spontaneously break into the dance number à la Atsider band (Baier’s Swiss production company is named after that movie) or an excerpt from the Authere of the 1967 Authera Weekend. (Note to future directors: Stop referenced Godard in the 60s movies. It feels obviously obvious and does not seem late, a great author of no service.)

All the evilness in A safe house Can he please the older audience of the French Arthouse who wants to re -view last days, especially from an angle that is less politically charged than most films about ’68 protests. Such viewers can also appreciate the unexpected turn that needs the story when Gaulle himself suddenly appears, giving a new meaning to the movie title.

More convincing is the second definition A safe house He gets after we start digging into the past of his grandfather, the Jews who lived in Paris when the Nazis took over and were forced to find a hiding place to wait for the war. BLANC manages to give its character emotional depth in the midst of comic hijinkov, and although the movie is more or less whimsical, it draws it all the traumas that the family has gone through.

In technical terms, Baier utilizes the maximum of what must be a limited budget, using a classic screening on the rear screen for driving scenes and other visual effects to compensate for the lack of large sets. The riots themselves ’68. They are alluded to the posters from the epoch, while the props represent the barricades erected around Paris. Cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaiier holds a palette of color light and airy, reflecting a movie viewed in dark times with nostalgia that can often be distracted.