Sandra’s husband was found dead at the foot of their house, probably the victim of a fall. Was it an accident, a suicide or murder? The upcoming trial will have to clarify the case.
An isolated chalet in the snow, a ball falling down the stairs before an animal’s jaws greedily catches it. These are the codes of horror cinema, before being hijacked to identify a couple. She, a famous writer, is being interviewed by a student who wants to consolidate her thesis topic. He, unseen upstairs, announces his presence with intrusive music, putting an end to the meeting between the two women. In this first scene, everything, or almost everything, is said about this unbalanced relationship. Crash, guilt, financial problems, jealousy, frustration, deception, depression, violence… all incriminating elements that the public prosecutor, a fierce adversary, will not hesitate to dissect in order to accuse the wife. She defends herself as best she can, juggling in French, which is not her mother tongue, and is forced to expose her life, her marriage, to the jury, the media, and her young son Daniel. But how difficult it is to face a ghost, as veiled as a memory.
Despite some length and a certain coldness, the film is an intimate and ingenious deconstruction of a female character, describing what she has had to give up in order to exist. The German actress Sandra Hüller embodies her powerfully. A wise choice, as her atypical face is difficult to read and her accent gives her a natural strangeness. She lends her name to a heroine whose profession is essentially the alteration of reality through fiction. It is up to the “shining” to illuminate this world in which the shadow of a doubt reigns. Daniel, an extralucid boy with blind eyes, marks the passing of time with the piece he learns to play on the piano. Accompanied by an amazing border collie, he discovers his father’s bloody body at the beginning and, at the risk of sacrificing his most faithful companion, holds his mother’s fate in his hands at the end. Herein lies the vertigo.
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 and this year’s Oscar for Best Screenplay, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall can be (re)discovered on DVD at the Library.
Call number: 2.3 ANA
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