‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Is an Elegantly Constructed Thriller

Every decision made not just that day but over much of their marriage is scrutinized by people who have never met Sandra, Samuel, or Daniel. Rarely has a film captured how much personal baggage comes flying out when a death is ruled inconclusive. Samuel’s therapist testifies that he wasn’t suicidal, but, of course, he only saw what Samuel wanted to show him. The interviewer is asked to comment on the state of a woman she just met that day. At times, it feels like Sandra’s personality is on trial. Then again, some evidence that she’s responsible is pretty compelling.

Huller is such a vivid, precise performer that we understand Sandra, an intellectual who has negotiated the terms of domestic life to make it work for her. We can’t be sure what Sandra did or didn’t do, and Triet challenges us to accept that without giving up on her. If the faintest whiff of “why this movie, now, from this director? ” wafts through the early going, Anatomy of a Fall ultimately serves as a bracing corrective to the sensationalism and glibness of so much crime-themed content these days. This is a nuanced work, resisting the teasing, Kabuki-like quality that characterizes even “prestige” efforts like HBO’s recent The Staircase (based on a real-life case that shares broad outlines and a few specifics with the fictional one here). The movie also mounts a subtle but pointed rebuke of a certain entrenched — and perhaps to some, surprising — cultural conservatism in France, particularly when it comes to gender and family.

Anatomy Of A Fall Review: Sensational Courtroom Drama Challenges Our Perception Of Truth

The partially blind tween says that he was outside before his mother and father had a “discussion” shortly before his fall, then thinks he may have misremembered his location due to shock. The song we hear is an instrumental cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.,” and even without the audible refrain of “But a bitch can’t get a dollar out of me,” the aggression behind the choice is unmistakable. Some time later, we finally lay eyes on Samuel himself; he is dead outside in the snow, bleeding heavily from a head wound. His body is discovered by his and Sandra’s 11-year-old son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), who has a severe visual impairment and is thus endowed, in this narrative’s irony-rich scheme, with Tiresian powers of perception. Daniel is aided in his discovery by his faithful border collie, Snoop — a sly reference, perhaps, to Snoop Dogg, who once recorded a remix of “P.I.M.P.”? In the face of inconclusive evidence, Sandra maintains her innocence, though she is shaken when the judge (Anne Rotger) insists the trial be conducted in French, a language in which Sandra is less fluent than English or her native German.

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In due course, Sandra is tried not just didshedoit.com for murder, but also for the lesser crimes of being a bad wife, a distant mom and, worst of all, a better artist than her husband. In “Anatomy of a Fall,” even the rawest of emotional truths turn out to be booby-trapped, and the ever-thin boundaries between life and art are repeatedly violated. There is almost no aspect of this tale that doesn’t feel slippery to the touch. Sandra is German but came to live here in France, where Samuel grew up, and is clearly unsettled on what she calls his turf.

Speaking largely in English, the language in which—as a compromise, or in search of common ground—they raised Daniel, she is a mother with no use for her mother tongue. She admits to sleeping with other people while she was married, and now, to add to the tangle, she acquires the services of a louche lawyer, Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud), with whom she was once involved. He’s badly needed, too, because Sandra is charged with Samuel’s murder.

“We have to live with the monsters we create,” Justine Triet told NPR’s Scott Simon, when he asked whether characters linger with her after a film. “I’ve been living with these people for three years, and I think I’ll probably live with them for at least another year.” Beyond the fact that it’s set in France and in the French justice system, the film is ultimately much less clear than these other examples about the answers to the central questions it seems to be asking. Because there is no huge revelation that makes everything snap into place, you could read it as a story of frustration or of stubbornly persistent chaos. But in its way, it, too, is about the disruption of order and its restoration.