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A Highly Intricate and Consequential Anatomy of a Fall


In both its title and poster imagery, Anatomy of a Fall recalls Otto Preminger’s legal thriller classic Anatomy of a Murder. And it’s a bit of a risk when endeavouring to distinguish your film, especially if it’s premièring at a festival like Cannes, to so closely reference another well-known movie. You’ve got to have a lot of confidence -which Justine Triet certainly did! And I think I would say that even if she hadn’t won the Palme d’Or for this exquisitely crafted courtroom drama that gives ample licence for one of the best performances of the year.
Sandra Hüller had previously played a beleaguered director for Triet on her last film Sibyl, a pretty good drama itself about a psychotherapist writer’s obsession with a young actress. This time around she is playing the writer, a successful German novelist  who was living with her husband, their visually-impaired son, and their dog in a chalet at the foot of the French Alps when her husband all of a sudden fell to his death. The kid and dog were out on a walk, there was blaring music playing, no witnesses around, and only Sandra Voyter in the house when it happened. When an autopsy reveals he had suffered a head wound before hitting the ground and that the manner of suicide is ruled improbable due to this and other factors, Sandra becomes the centre of an investigation into a potential murder.
The circumstantial evidence does not look good for her, especially when factoring in the sour patch their relationship was in at the time -due to both personal and professional reasons, an infidelity on her part from earlier in the year, and even a violent argument secretly recorded by her husband just the previous day. But it’s never in doubt that Sandra is innocent -even as we the audience don’t see the death ourselves. Her character and the presumptions of the legal and media systems she must contend with speak her innocence for her.
Triet fully commits to the realism of her drama at just about every stage. From re-enactors coming in and testing the conditions, challenging the record of both Sandra and her son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) -slyly looking for holes in their stories, to the details of the trial itself -vicious though not overly-exaggerated, and the glimpse of a media circus that arises around the case due to Sandra’s relative fame. A couple of the scenes of lawyers addressing reporters are even shot handheld to mimic the fracas often seen in live news broadcasts. And it is probably the most objective the movie ever gets, as Triet pairs her calculated authenticity with the very intimate personalized experience of this all for Sandra, and for Daniel. During trial, we see snapshot visions from Daniel, whose partial blindness necessitates him approximating from imagination, as the attorneys lay out their case for what happened: his father falling to his death, his mother pushing him. And at a critical juncture, Sandra recalls the conversation with Samuel (Samuel Theis) that devolved into a vicious fight as audio of it plays, allowing the audience some context the courtroom can’t receive.
As a defendant, Sandra has a harsh demeanour, she isn’t particularly emotional –another mark of some honesty- which invites judgement and considerable speculation. It is something of an inverse of David Fincher’s Gone Girl, but with an added degree of underlying sexism, even twinges of xenophobia and biphobia, fuelling the prejudice with which the case against her is handled. This is evident in some of the truly ludicrous reaches made by the prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz), including the invocation of passages from her novels as evidence against her character.
Her real character is that of an intelligent, frustrated woman processing this tragedy whilst maintaining firm conviction of her innocence; a woman who has also been dealing with considerable discontentment for quite some time prior to the death.  Over the course of the legal quagmire the emotional fallout for both parents from Daniel’s injury are revealed, the spiral of depression and near-separation it led to, and how it continued to impact them. Most interesting is the battle of cultures that took place in their home, Samuel being French, Sandra being German and not particularly fluent in French, the pair settling on English as a neutral language. There was resentment on Samuel’s part over this, and on Sandra’s part over having to live in his childhood home where she feels alienated, raising their son with French and no German. Her inability to acclimate only more starkly casts her as an outsider for the purposes at hand, forced to speak in French in order to stand trial and defend herself –the film defines Sandra often by her isolation, and this is its most vivid form.
With deft focus and rigid assuredness motivating her every choice, Hüller delivers a deceptively engrossing performance of measured subtlety. Though she is rarely in control of what is happening around or to her, her domineering presence is felt sharply, her strength of will -even in moments where it seems to be breaking. It is a performance of sheer resiliency, yet Hüller also draws on emotional intensity where necessary: with her son or her husband -though of a very particular kind that is not your standard show of anger or anguish. Always she feels in lock-step with the mood of the character, as believable and genuine as anything else in the movie. As to the other characters, though we’re not privy to his inner battle Theis relates in his scenes both that glimmer of depression biting away at him and barely concealed bitterness towards Sandra. Swann Arlaud is fantastic as Sandra’s friendly yet powerful defence lawyer. More impressive though is the young Machado-Graner, as Daniel deals with the complex emotions of his mother being accused of killing his father, yet summoning up real courage and fortitude when called upon to testify himself. And I’d be remiss not to mention the family dog Snoop (winner of the Palme Dog award!) playing very convincingly a near-devastating scene.
There is a strange elegance to the way Triet engages with her subject matter here, in spite of the fierce commitment to authenticity. Everything about the family drama feels so clean and critical. It’s as though the film conditions you to care about the case -and a lot of this comes down to the performances, especially Hüllers, but it is written and invested with such palpable stakes. And I think it’s meaningful that, without spoilers, where the case ends the death is not perfectly ascertained. Because it’s not so important as Sandra’s vindication, something that the movie also intelligently notes, is even itself a double-edged sword. It is a shrewd and deeply intuitive original legal drama -an important point given this kind of movie would only be made in the American industry if it was based on a true story. But Triet aimed for a different kind of truth to engage with, and in Anatomy of a Fall she does so with admirable aplomb.

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