Anato­my of a Fall – first-look review

Is there a spe­cif­ic word in film crit­i­cism for the kind of real­is­tic dra­ma in which people’s worst night­mares seem to be com­ing true, and if not, should there be? They’re a bit like hor­ror movies, but more tonal­ly plau­si­ble. Think Andy Dufresne get­ting sent to prison in The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion, Humphrey Bogart’s mur­der sus­pect in In a Lone­ly Place, or the fam­i­ly run­ning from an avalanche in Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure.

The direc­tor Jus­tine Triet’s lat­est is a par­tic­u­lar­ly fine­ly wrought addi­tion to this mini-genre, as mid­dle-class author San­dra (San­dra Hüller) finds her­self stand­ing tri­al for the mur­der of her hus­band, who has died after falling or being pushed from a bal­cony in their scenic chalet in the French Alps. There are no wit­ness­es – their only son Daniel (Milo Macha­do Graner) was out walk­ing with his scene-steal­ing dog Snoop at the time.

But where this film dif­fers from films with sim­i­lar premis­es is that there is no clear antag­o­nist or obvi­ous­ly charm­ing hero here. Fur­ther­more, San­dra ticks a num­ber of box­es for qual­i­ties that are often seen as unlike­able in women: verg­ing on cold, but very assertive, she is unin­ter­est­ed in behav­ing con­ven­tion­al­ly, stand­ing her ground and cen­tring her­self in her own nar­ra­tive in a way that her defence lawyer (in a beau­ti­ful­ly judged per­for­mance from Swann Arlaud) advis­es her to tone down. And yet, while it would have been easy to write the film as a full-throat­ed fem­i­nist roar of frus­tra­tion, Tri­et isn’t inter­est­ed in mak­ing a pat polemic, and she com­pli­cates things by mak­ing San­dra legit­i­mate­ly iffy in a num­ber of ways – for one thing, San­dra doesn’t actu­al­ly have an alibi.

This allows the film to explore the effects of uncer­tain­ty, not just with­in the legal sys­tem, but in the eyes of the view­er. Film­mak­ers and scriptwrit­ers will some­times turn to ​“ambi­gu­i­ty” as a catch-all excuse for mud­dy or tepid writ­ing, but to write uncer­tain­ty in a way that keeps the view­er tense as a coiled spring through­out a hefty two and half hour run­time is a rare gift.

The stand-out scene (in a film with sev­er­al con­tenders) is an argu­ment between San­dra and her late hus­band Samuel (Samuel The­is), seen in flash­back. Unbe­knownst to San­dra, Samuel record­ed audio of the entire fight, a record­ing which the pros­e­cu­tion now has access to. You can’t help but won­der how you your­self would come across in a court­room if some­one taped you los­ing your tem­per. Quite apart from being on tri­al for mur­der, this pub­lic show­cas­ing of some­thing as per­son­al as a fight that cuts to the core of a relationship’s most fun­da­men­tal issues feels more expos­ing than any num­ber of leaked sex tapes ever could.

This is Triet’s fourth fea­ture film, and her con­trol of the mate­r­i­al and com­mit­ment to allow­ing her zesty premise and excep­tion­al cast car­ry the film with­out the need for any pyrotech­nic styl­is­tic quirks or genre trap­pings con­firm her as a major tal­ent at the peak of her pow­ers. It is thrilling to imag­ine the films she will make in future, but also to lux­u­ri­ate in the per­fect com­po­sure of this film, which doesn’t con­tain a sin­gle false note. And speak­ing of notes: after watch­ing this film, you’ll nev­er lis­ten to 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P. the same way again: a cov­er of the song by the Bacao Rhythm and Steel Band is prac­ti­cal­ly a char­ac­ter in the film in its own right, in a way that is too dar­ing and deli­cious to spoil here.