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‘The Safe House’ Review: A Malformed Family Portrait Connecting May 1968 to World War II
Lionel Baier’s adaptation of Christophe Boltanski’s novel 'The Safe House' narrates more than it depicts.
Although Boltanski’s family serves as fuel for the screenplay, “The Safe House” anonymizes them and tilt-shifts some of the story’s details, while keeping the broad premise intact: a saga unfolding in the margins of one of France’s most pivotal modern protests. As the narrator discusses “The Safe House” from the top down, we’re introduced to the boy’s enterprising uncles — the younger (Aurélien Gabrielli), a visual artist, and the older (William Lebghil), an academic — as well as his idiosyncratic grandparents (Michel Blanc and Dominique Reymond), and his flamboyant great-grandmother (Liliane Rovère), an immigrant from Odessa. The propulsive, distantly Jacques Tati-style energy of these initial scenes provides just enough of a foothold for the story, before the broader politics in backdrop yank the young boy’s parents (Adrien Barazzone, Larisa Faber) away from the domestic setting.
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