Review: Anatomy Of A Fall

Image courtesy of Neon.

Justine Triet's Palm d'Or winner "Anatomy of a Fall" may have a mystery at its center - less a matter of whodunnit than what happened - but its most intriguing passages involve the decline of a partnership and its effect on a family. The film is a courtroom drama, but the lead character's key interest is not so much what the jury decides, but rather what her son thinks happened.

The film opens on author Sandra (Sandra Huller) taking part in an interview with a younger woman. Not only is the interviewer obviously interested in Sandra's work, but the author seems equally intrigued by the younger woman's opinions. The interview is interrupted numerous times by the sounds of 50 Cent's "P.I.M.P" blaring from upstairs, where Sandra's husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis) - a failed writer who has moved his German wife and young son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) back to his rural French hometown - is apparently working on the house.

The blasting of the music seems to be a passive aggressive act. Sandra cuts short the interview and goes to confront her husband, which takes place off camera. Daniel, who mostly lost his sight some years before due to an accident for which Sandra partially blames her husband, returns from walking his dog, Snoop, to find his father lying dead in the snow outside of the home. It appears that he has fallen from an open window in the attic where he was working.

Sandra is questioned by the police and, shortly thereafter, indicted in the death, primarily because the authorities cannot seem to come up with any other explanation for Samuel's demise. They don't buy that he was murdered by someone else, fell accidentally, or committed suicide. Sandra proclaims her innocence, but enlists a lawyer friend, Vincent (Swann Arlaud), to take her case, and much of the rest of the film is spent in courtrooms, where Sandra defends herself against witnesses - many of whom don't actually know her, such as Samuel's opinionated psychiatrist and other forensic experts - and tries to explain why her rapidly declining marriage to Samuel doesn't explain why or how he died.

"Anatomy of a Fall" is less interested in who killed Samuel or why, but instead about the nature of truth and whether we can actually ever truly know someone. Sandra sits on the stand listening to people who don't know her try to dissect her life, but she tells them they are merely grazing the surface. She argues with the psychiatrist, who insists that Samuel's version of the marriage is the true one, and notes that she could hire a psychiatrist who could appear in court and say the exact opposite, based on what she told him. She must also contend with the misogynist prosecutor's harangues involving a past infidelity and accusations of how she castrated her husband, a writer who was unable to produce anything and, therefore, blamed his wife for his incapacity. 

Meanwhile, Daniel listens to the trial. One of the more interesting elements of the film is how the investigators lecture the young boy - who was clearly traumatized by his father's death - on his inability to recall everything he experienced or felt on the day of the death; however, Daniel, who has learned to focus his other senses - namely, his hearing - in the wake of his damaged eyesight - actually gains more insight into the situation as the court case drags on. His final appearance in the court - and his take on a conversation he had with his father some time before when Snoop fell ill - seemingly rattles the prosecutor and judges in the case because he is able to deduce things that they clearly cannot.

Huller, who was so good some years ago in "Toni Erdmann," gives a remarkable performance as Sandra, who seems tightly wound during the course of the trial, but whose intensity results in an outburst during a flashback that involves the courtroom listening to an audio file. 

The film is a slow burn that doesn't exactly wrap up the case neatly - although the action of the story is technically resolved - and that is because Triet and company are more interested in the questions posed here, and it is to the film's benefit that it doesn't pretend to have all the answers. As a result, "Anatomy of a Fall" is a thought provoking film that ranks among the year's best.