OFFICIAL SELECTION – COMPETITION
Anatomy of a fall, and the Cannes competition regains its spring! We have to believe that Justine Triet’s fourth feature film presses the right buttons, if they exist: remarkable writing, perfect actors, a well-kept secret and a double-bottomed, poisonous, sensitive atmosphere. Yes, everything is there, but there is something more in this trial film which examines the horrors of a couple of writers, one of whom dies. Suicide, murder? We will never know, but the path that leads us to this mystery is a thrilling cinematic precis.
Before the jurors of the Assize Court, the accused, Sandra (Sandra Hüller) takes us through the intricacies of her intimacy with her companion, Samuel, before he dies – Samuel Theis, who will remain offscreen, except in a few crucial scenes. Co-written with Arthur Harari, director of Black Diamond (2015), Onoda, 10,000 nights in the jungle (2021), and companion to Justine Triet, the story condenses the filmmaker’s obsessions, while injecting them into a narrative as minimal as it is terrifying: living as a couple kills.
Justine Triet’s films are whirlwinds challenging actresses to play impure beings, when the private and professional lives of their characters collide with a crash. And let us specify from the outset that, in terms of disorder and impurity, Sandra Hüller excels and would make an excellent interpretation prize (let’s take a chance). Before her, in The Battle of Solferino (2013), Lætitia Dosch played a journalist covering the face-to-face of 2012, in the middle of a fight with her ex (Vincent Macaigne) over child custody; In Victoria (2016), Virginie Efira played a borderline criminal lawyer who found herself defending a friend accused of murder (Melvil Poupaud). In Sibyl (2019), which was also in competition at Cannes, the same Virginie Efira stepped into the shoes of a vampire writer shrink finding inspiration in the misfortunes and distress of her patient (Adèle Exarchopoulos).
Writer out of stories
Anatomy of a fall opens in the energy and confusion of a discussion that cannot take place. Here we are catapulted into a chalet located on the heights of Grenoble, just before the tragedy. A wooden staircase leading to the attic, thundering music filling the whole space… Two women are talking to each other, whose faces are filmed in close-up: Sandra, a writer, receives a student (Camille Rutherford) who has come to interview her, but the noise is such that maintenance must be interrupted. Upstairs, Samuel turned up the sound. Probably to annoy his wife. Author too, he is out of stories. Sandra says goodbye to the student, climbs the stairs. Cut. We will not see the rest.
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