Yahoo Lifestyle ‘I’ve Stopped Looking for the Truth’: Lionel Baier Debuts New Clip for His Berlin Competition Title ‘The Safe House’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Paris, May 1968, becomes more than a backdrop in “The Safe House” (“La cache”), Swiss filmmaker Lionel Baier’s latest. It’s an adaptation of Christophe Boltanski’s Prix Femina winning novel, “La cache,” produced by Bande à Part Films and co-produced with Red Lion, Les Films du Poisson, RTS Radio Télévision Suisse and SRG SSR, making it a French, Swiss and Luxembourgish co-production. The comedy-drama, which debuts in competition at Berlinale, sees Baier observe an eccentric family.
The ensemble cast features Dominique Reymond as the Grandmother, the late Michel Blanc as Père-Grand, the Grandfather, William Lebghil as the Great Uncle and Aurélien Gabrielli as Little Uncle. Liliane Rovère portrays Hinterland, while Adrien Barazzone and Larisa Faber play the boy’s father and mother, respectively, with Ethan Chimienti as the aforementioned boy. Gilles Privat also joins the ensemble in a key supporting role.
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Baier’s film opens with a line from the book: “In a clean world, you must be dirty. Bacteria protect us.” These words float above a scene in which the young boy, armed only with a flashlight, explores corridors filled with books, cherished mementos, and even a miniature Citroën. While his parents are out on the streets to join the chorus of student protests, he delights in his separate world inside the apartment.
Within its walls, the apartment transforms into a microcosm of a bygone era, a store of history and familial secrets. The boy’s uncles—a visual artist and an aspiring intellectual—add his own flair, while Hinterland, his flamboyant great-grandmother, played by the now 92-year-old Liliane Rovère, regales memories of her home in Odessa, Prokofiev and a life less ordinary. Amid playful chatter and whispered revelations, everyday objects become symbols: a jazz-inflected soundtrack sets a measured pace and, finally, an unexpected visitor exposes a family grappling with its past as Paris outside grapples for its future.
Lionel Baier spoke with Variety prior to the film’s Berlin world premiere.
You open the film with the intriguing line, “In a clean world, you must be dirty. Bacteria protect us.” What does this paradox mean in the context of the film, and how does it set the tone for the blending of humor, history and personal memory throughout the story?
It’s a direct quotation from the novel. I think Grandfather protects himself from evil by taming it. We mustn’t be afraid of it but use it, divert it to do good around us. And it’s also a warning: remember that hygienism led to the worst atrocities. You must love dirt. In fact, it’s a problem in films today: the streets are too clean, you can’t see the dust and air in the shots. It’s a real anachronistic element in “The Safe House.” For example, the air of Paris is too transparent in 2024. You can’t see it. And the walls are too white.
The film’s jazz soundtrack, rich color palette and playful nods to everything from Prokofiev to vintage Citroëns seem to serve as cultural touchstones. Can you discuss how music and visual aesthetics help reinforce the film’s themes of heritage, identity, and transformation?
This is the first time I’ve worked with composers on a soundtrack. Diego, Nora and Lionel Baldenweg did a fantastic job of composing and improvising. I wanted to find breath in the instruments themselves, to hear the air passing through the brass instruments, the piano hammers tapping on the strings. Something not too clean. As 80% of the film was shot in a studio, I wanted to give it some air. I’m a great admirer of Keith Jarrett, who started these piano solos at this point and who is touring Europe. And you can hear Miles Davis in Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud a few years before. There’s also a liberation in music.
“La Cache” is a deeply personal book for Christophe Boltanski. How did you approach adapting such intimate material for the screen, and were there particular moments or themes from the book that you felt were indispensable to your film?
I liked Christophe Boltanski’s book because, like all great writers, when he talks about his family, he’s talking about ours. So I mixed my memories with his. In fact, in the book, May ’68 is only mentioned in one sentence. I wanted to make the film for the scene when the car broke down a few kilometers before Odessa. It’s not exactly the same situation as in the book, but I understand the idea of preferring Odessa as told by the great-grandmother to reality. I did the same for my family’s past. I’ve stopped looking for the truth, what I tell myself is much better.
Set against the backdrop of May ’68, the film interweaves the chaotic energy of historic protests with the private world of an eccentric family. How did you balance these two narratives—public history and personal memory—in your adaptation?
The 1968 revolution was a revelation of the French unconscious. At the end of the war, General de Gaulle declared that the Vichy regime was not part of the great national story, and should be forgotten. But May ’68 reawakened passions. Young people demanded explanations, and their parents felt their identity was threatened. Even today, extreme right-wing parties want to return to a pre-60s world. The family is the guardian of what really makes France what it is: its diversity, its crossbreeding, its eccentricity, its courage and its faith in change. It’s what’s hidden in the back of the cache and what’s on the streets in May 1968. The story of the Boltanski is the History of France.
The film toys with ideas about truth and belief— “Believing isn’t lying,” and even muses that ‘in linguistics, lies don’t exist.’ Can you talk about how these philosophical ideas about language and truth informed the film’s narrative and visual style?
Cinema is a religion, not truth. It is a way of representing life, but it is not life. You have to give the audience good reasons to have faith. If you force them or tell them that you have the ultimate truth, then it is a cult, and you are a guru. Which I do not wish to be. In the visual style of the film, this explains, for example, the scene of the toy car that becomes a real car. Since Grand-Oncle reads Gaston Lagaffe comics, this way of writing exists in the Boltanski world, so it is possible for a dinky toy to become a real car. This is the religion of the film.
The film seems to comment on the evolution of communication—from a love of language to a more detached, modern form of communication. How do you see this transformation playing out in the lives of your characters, and does it say something about the birth of the modern individual in a changing society?
Look at what is happening today. When Trump speaks out and says that Gaza could become the Côte d’Azur of the Middle East, everyone reacts to this idea, which is otherwise despicable. We react to what he communicates. But if we are interested in the words he uses, in the way he arranges them, then we are in the language. And there, we come into contact with who he really is. Jacques Lacan explained this very well. The way of saying is more important than what is said. We are in our words. We should listen carefully to how we are governed and not why. I studied linguistics at university at the same time as cinema. Maybe I am a little bit nostalgic about this time.
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