Sharp, Affecting Courtroom Drama Anatomy of a Fall Interrogates a Marriage

Anatomy of a Fall is the tale of a stone-cold female author who steals her husband’s book idea, then mercilessly murders him. It’s also the sorry story of a widow who must defend herself in court after her depressed husband commits suicide by jumping from the attic window of their remote home in the French Alps. The truth remains ambiguous; we may learn the ending of the trial, but we will never know what really happened. The facts of the case: Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is a writer whose books often borrow from her life—the death of her mother, the emotional rift from her father, and the accident that left her 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) partially blind. Her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), also a writer, was unable to pick Daniel up from school on time, leading to the accident, and thus blamed himself. One morning, Daniel goes on a walk with his dog Snoop and returns to find his father dead in the snow. Sandra, the only other person present in the house at the time, is the prime suspect, although she claims she was asleep.

Although filmmaker Justine Triet leaves the ending ambiguous, it’s fairly easy to parse which of these two films she set out to make. Sandra might be an icy protagonist, but Triet’s view of her is largely sympathetic. Triet takes Basic Instinct’s sexy salaciousness and shrouds it in a thick cable knit turtleneck, simultaneously looking down on it and trotting it out when the courtroom procedural gets too tedious. Anatomy of a Fall shows a little bit of leg, never the whole pussy. Triet employed this same tactic in Sibyl, another drama she co-wrote with her romantic partner Arthur Harari about a writer who borrows from her life experience. That film may be a bit less even in tone than Anatomy of a Fall, but even then Triet made it clear that her filmmaking style is more elevated than the “trashy” genre films that came before. What made watching Sibyl so frustrating in 2019, and what still frustrates me about Anatomy of a Fall now, is Triet’s refusal to really go there, instead favoring intellectual posturing. When Triet should make a daring move, she instead buttons her collar up to her neck. 

The ever-present and utterly tame perspective of the media, for example, adds little to Anatomy of a Fall. This may be more a symptom of polite European news coverage, but the most damning thing a talk show host does in the film is read a quote from one of Sandra’s books. In a film more daring in its critique of the media, you might see a Joan Rivers-like media figure cracking inappropriate jokes about Sandra’s frigid demeanor.

In contrast, the best moment in Anatomy of a Fall is one of tense passion, showing Sandra and Samuel battling it out in flashback via an audio recording he made without her knowledge, the day before his death. They may be world-famous writers who seem to have it all, but they have a lively argument over the same things every other couple argues over: Money, infidelity and, most of all, the division of labor in the household. Who does more for the family, who makes more time for their son? These arguments are as old as time, but what sets Sandra and Samuel apart from ordinary couples, fame aside, is their inability to discuss these issues without getting violent and irrational. This explosive moment puts the main question that is quietly present in our lives squarely into focus: If your romantic life were put under the scrutiny of the law, without time for preparation, would you come out as the victim or the perpetrator?