Director: Justine Triet

Stars: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arnaud, Milo Machado Graner, Samuel Theis, Antoine Reinartz

Justine Triet's masterfully-executed procedural thriller works both as a tense courtroom drama and an endlessly fascinating character study.

Hüller is Sandra Voyter, a successful German writer living in a secluded but smart chalet in the French Alps with her less successful, embittered novelist husband Samuel (Theis) and their eleven-year-old blind son Daniel (Machado Graner). We meet Sandra as she is being interviewed by a female student journalist. Their increasingly flirtatious chat proves impossible to progress however when the unseen Samuel begins blaring out an instrumental version of 50 Cent’s ‘P.I.M.P’ from upstairs.

Later, Daniel returns from walking their dog Snoop to find his father lying dead on the ground after seemingly falling from the top floor.

Police investigations suggest that Samuel sustained a head wound prior to falling. An investigation ensues with Sandra calling in a close lawyer friend Vincent (Arnaud) to represent her. Over the subsequent twelve months, Sandra and Daniel are subject to a bruising dissection of their private life and family history, in the investigation, and a subsequent trial with attendant media blitz, in which Sandra is required to speak French when she feels far more able and nuanced communicating in English. In a fascinating sequence, the eccentric, dogged prosecutor (Reinartz) muses aloud on whether events from Sandra’s semi-autobiographical novels can be taken into account when judging her character.

The trial scenes are so riveting that they may end up reenergising the courtroom drama genre. Cinematographer Simon Beaufils camera ranges from forensic close-ups to dramatic swoops around the courtroom, at one point moving frantically back and forth between prosecutor and defence as they argue with an upsettingly bewildered Daniel stuck between them. Triet who also co-wrote the script with Arthur Harari, delivers a devastating flashback scene to a harrowingly raw quarrel between Sandra and Samuel that recalls Bergman’s ‘Scenes from a Marriage’.

Performances are across the board excellent but this is Hüller’s film, her character broadly sympathetic but compellingly enigmatic and constantly open to interpretation. So good is Hüller in fact, that when genre conventions kick in in the third act, there is a slight tension between her grounded performance and the dramatic events taking place.

Anatomy of a Fall is released 10th November

David Willoughby

Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm