Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023) (Patreon)

Now, as November approaches, we find ourselves careening into the period where prestige pictures assert themselves, demanding our attention. As is often the case, we encounter a number of productions with solid pedigree and appropriate festival attention. Inevitably, many of these films are "good enough," but never as interesting as they purport to be. These films are by no means bad, but there's a sense that they are following well-worn paths to acclaim, striking appropriately literary poses without being formally audacious enough to really put anybody off. At the risk of sounding like a complete lunatic, we could call this "Biden cinema."

In the grand tradition, Justine Triet has been duly rewarded for becoming a less quirky, more conventional artist. Sibyl was driven by psychopathy, its unhinged protagonist making choices that could only be understood in terms of the death-drive. This was the story of a very successful woman on a mad crusade to destroy herself. As a kind of inversion, Anatomy of a Fall is about another successful woman doing everything in her power to save herself, in the face of accusations that are more circumstantial than anything.

Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is a celebrated author. She is married to Samuel (Samuel Theis), a teacher who is himself a frustrated writer and may resent Sandra's status. Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari organize Anatomy as a serious-minded crime procedural -- did he jump or was he pushed? -- and on that level it is never less than watchable. Nicolas Leblanc cited Clouzot as a reference, and I don't disagree, although Triet's attention to the bloodless atmosphere of the haute-bourgeoisie strikes me as a bit more overtly Chabrolian. 

In either case, Anatomy operates on two parallel tracks. There is the investigation and (after a one-year ellipsis) the trial of Sandra on murder charges. And then there is the private side of this tragedy, with Sandra confiding in her old friend and attorney Vincent (Swann Arlaud) and working to resume a normal relationship with her son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner). Both elements are focused on locating the truth, but there are different criteria in both cases and it's unclear whether these two "trials" can (or should) come to the same conclusion.

There is an emotionally potent aspect to Anatomy that Triet and Harari don't seem all that interested in pursuing. One of the subplots of Egoyan's Exotica, you may recall, is about a man whose wife died in a car accident with her lover, and then his daughter was abducted and murdered. Until police caught the man who killed the girl, suspicion focused on her devastated father, whose private life was dissected by investigators, who magnified his grief and trauma for what turned out to be no good reason. If you experience too much sorrow in your life, you come under suspicion. This is a subtext that Anatomy mobilizes but only as an engine for plot.

During the trial, prosecutors air the couple's dirty laundry: accusations of plagiarism, sexual affairs, and the toll that Daniel's accident took on both his parents and their marriage. Daniel sits in the gallery, taking this all in. Then, when Sandra is acquitted, she recognizes that she has been deconstructed in front of her child and may never be able to completely regain his trust. This could have been a shattering psychological ending for Anatomy, but instead the filmmakers engage in a feint that suggests complexity but is really just its simulacrum. We never know whether Sandra was indeed innocent, or got away with murder. 

This undecidability participates in the overall shell game of Anatomy, since providing an answer would "cheapen" this serious art film. But in fact, it would have provided some affective heft; it would have shown precisely what was at stake for both Sandra and Daniel. Instead we end up with a courtroom drama gussied up with designer ambiguity. Let the Oscar campaign begin.