The cache: the ultimate big role of Michel Blanc (critic)

In May 68, the portrait of a whimsical family, entrenched in their Parisian apartment. A moving reflection on history, identity and Judeity.

The title cache is first of all this large apartment in the rue de Grenelle, in which a family of Parisian intellectuals lives in a bohemian way – the film is adapted from a book by journalist Christophe Boltanski and we can recognize in the characters certain famous members of his family, his father Luc (poet and sociologist) or his uncle Christian (plastic artist). The cache also designates this mysterious corner of the apartment in which the young hero of the film is convinced that a cat has taken up residence. And the cache, finally, is also a way of evoking history, its holes, its shadows, its secret folds, where one can enclose memories, from which can arise hauntings.

From one Franco-French war to the other, the film probes the always vivid echo of the years of occupation in the Paris of May 68. This a priori very theoretical material is treated by Lionel Baier in a joyful, light way, which manages to avoid the pitfall of the nostalgico-fertile reconstruction of the Thirty Glorious Years-despite the winks to Gaston Lagaffe and the Sketches of Musical Air by Jean Yanne.

Baier prefers to talk about serious things about the lively and amused tone of the sixties Godard, sometimes sparing its effects, as in this restaurant scene with Michel Blanc (of which it is the last role in the cinema), first difficult to decipherable, and which will only reveal its emotional power. The cachelogically, is a discreet, and very deep film.

From Lionel Baier. With Dominique Reymond, Michel Blanc, William Lebghil… Duration 1h30. Released March 19, 2025