Justine Triet directed Anatomy of a Fall (French: Anatomie d’une chute), courtroom drama thriller, based on a screenplay she co-wrote with her partner, Arthur Harari.
Grade: A (***** out of *****)
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It stars Sandra Hüller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in the case of her husband’s sudden death.
Anatomy of a Fall premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 21 May 2023, where it won the Palme d’Or and the Palm Dog Award and competed for the Queer Palm.
The film received critical acclaim, with praise for Triet and Hüller, and sold over one million admissions in France. It continued to win awards, including the National Board of Review Award for Best International Film and nominations for the Spirit Awards.
Setting:
The tale is largely set in an isolated mountain chalet near Grenoble.
In the first scene, Samuel Maleski is playing music in his attic so loudly that his wife, novelist Sandra Voyter, asks to reschedule with the female student interviewing her.
Their son, Daniel, who is blind, returns from a long walk with his guide dog Snoop to find Samuel dead below his attic window.
Talking to an old friend, lawyer Vincent Renzi, she says the fall must have been accidental. When Vincent says that the court will not believe that, Sandra tells Vincent about Samuel’s attempt to overdose on aspirin months earlier, after having gone off antidepressants. Vincent notes a bruise on her arm, which she says had occurred from bumping into a countertop.
Daniel tells the police investigation that his parents were having a calm talk when he left the house, but gives conflicting accounts of exactly where he was standing.
An autopsy revealing Samuel’s head wound occurring before his body hit the ground, blood spatter.
Then, an audio recording Samuel made of one of many fights he and Sandra had the day before he died, prompts an indictment.
During the trial, Sandra’s defense team claims Samuel fell from the attic window and hit his head on a shed, but the prosecution’s theory is that Sandra hit him with a blunt object and pushed him from the third-floor balcony.
During a courtroom argument with Samuel’s psychiatrist, who insists his patient had no suicidal intent, she talks about all kinds of resentment towards Samuel.
In the recorded fight, Samuel accuses her of plagiarism, infidelity, and exerting control over his life. The argument turns physically violent, but it’s not clear who is hitting whom. The prosecution claims that all the violence was initiated by Sandra. She had thrown a glass at a wall and slapped Samuel’s face, and the bruises on her arms were due to Samuel grabbing her; the rest of the violence heard was Samuel beating on himself.
After Sandra admits to having had an affair with a woman before Samuel’s death, the prosecution argues that Samuel’s loud music indicated jealousy over Sandra’s flirting with the interviewer, leading to physical confrontation and prosecution Sandra killing him.
The prosecutor notes her pattern of writing personal conflicts into her stories and how murdering Samuel could mirror a minor character’s thoughts from her recent novel.
Sandra protests that one audio recording does not represent the their complex marriage, nor do the words of a character in one of her novels reflect her own inclinations.
Disturbed by what has transpired, Daniel insists on testifying before closing arguments, and the judge lays strict ground rules to prevent influence on Daniel’s testimony.
Daniel then asks that Sandra leave their house for the weekend so that his court monitor, Marge, watch over him and Snoop.
After hearing Sandra’s testimony about Samuel’s aspirin overdose, Daniel remembered that Snoop became sick at that time and suspects that Snoop had eaten Samuel’s vomit, That weekend, he deliberately feeds Snoop aspirin, which aligns with Sandra’s testimony.
Daniel confides to Marge his anguish over determining what is truth. She advises him that when we don’t know what’s really true, we can instead decide or ourselves.
On the witness stand, Daniel says that if his mother did this, he can’t understand it, but if his father did it, he can. He testifies that when he and Samuel were driving Snoop to the veterinarian, his father spoke to him about the need to be prepared that those he loves will die, which Daniel sees as Samuel’s own suicidal thoughts.
Sandra is soon acquitted after Daniel’s testimony. When she comes home, Daniel is afraid of her homecoming and she is too, which leads to a warm reuniting.
In the last scene, As Sandra heads too bed, she lingers at a photo of her and Samuel before falling asleep with Snoop.
Making of Hitchcockian Procedural Thriller
Justine Triet’s fourth feature film, Anatomie d’une chute, co-written by her and Arthur Harari, is sort of “a Hitchcockian procedural thriller.”
As Triet told her that the language would be an important subject, Hüller wished to speak French in the film, but Triet rejected the idea. “The fact she is a German who speaks English and tries to speak French that creates lots of masks and clouds the issue, creating more confusion around who she is,” Triet explained.
On the set, Hüller repeatedly asked Triet whether her character was guilty or not, but the director refused to answer.
Triet had wanted to make another trial film for a long time since her 2016 film, In Bed with Victoria. “I really wanted to address the legal issue in its smallest details, to address the issues of the couple living together. It was also a pretext to dissect their life.
The shoot took place mostly in the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, such as in Maurienne and Villarembert in Savoie, and in Montbonnot-Saint-Martin and Grenoble in Isère
Critical Acclaim in France
Anatomy of a Fall was ranked third on Cahiers du Cinéma’s top 10 films of 2023 list.
Commercial Success
By October 1, 2023, Anatomy of a Fall has exceeded 1 million admissions in France one month after its theatrical release, becoming the seventh Palme d’Or winner–and third French Palme d’Or winner–to cross the 1 million admissions mark in France since 2000.
On September 21, 2023, France chose to submit The Taste of Things instead, which sparked controversy. French insiders claimed that director Justine Triet was being “punished” for criticizing French President Emmanuel Macron’s repression of the pension reform protest movement during her acceptance speech at the Cannes Film Fest.
Cast
Sandra Hüller as Sandra Voyter
Swann Arlaud as Vincent Renzi
Milo Machado Graner as Daniel Maleski
Antoine Reinartz as the prosecutor
Samuel Theis as Samuel Maleski
Jehnny Beth as Marge Berger
Saadia Bentaieb as Nour
Camille Rutherford as Zoé Solidor
Anne Rotger as the President
Sophie Fillières as Monica
Credits:
French Anatomie d’une chute
Directed by Justine Triet
Written by Justine Triet, Arthur Harari
Cinematography: Simon Beaufils
Edited by Laurent Sénéchal
Produced by Marie-Ange Luciani, David Thion
Production companies: Les Films Pelléas, Les Films de Pierre
Distributed by Le Pacte
Release dates: May 21, 2023 (Cannes); August 23, 2023 (France)
Running time: 152 minutes
Budget € 6.2 million ($6.7 million)
Box office $36 million
