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ANATOMY OF A FALL, BY JUSTINE TRIET
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There's a bracing and chilly high-mindedness about Justine Triet's psychothriller, about a suspicious death whose only reliable witness happens to be blind.
I have been agnostic about Justine Triet's work in the past, but her courtroom drama murder mystery in this year's Cannes competition, with its ambiguous title and ambiguous dénouement, is very intriguing. It reminded me at various stages of Billy Wilder's Agatha Christie adaptation Witness for the Prosecution or Steven Bochco's underrated, under-remembered 90s TV drama Murder One.
Sandra Hüller plays Sandra, a successful and fashionable author (that staple figure of French cinema), German by birth, but now living in a handsome chalet in the French Alps with her French husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), a former academic and would-be author himself, who has now hit a career slump and creative block and is currently hoping to salvage the family finances by fixing up the chalet as an Airbnb. It is while he is grumpily sawing and hammering upstairs, with the music on too loud, that Sandra attempts to give an interview, which simply has to be abandoned because of the noise. Sandra wearily attempts to take a nap, while the couple's son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) takes their dog Snoop for a walk...
Peter Bradshaw
