You know, when you lose, you lose

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2023

#17 :  Anatomie D'Une Chute (Anatomy Of A Fall)

A gripping courtroom drama that makes multiple references to 50 Cent’s ‘P.I.M.P’, Anatomy Of A Fall above all else showcases the immense talents of Sandra Hüller (catch her next in Jonathan Glazer’s chilling The Zone Of Interest). Its premise is simple: a troubled marriage ends with the suspicious death of the husband after falling from the attic window of their family chalet. A heated case ensues, in which Hüller’s Sandra protests her innocence, while her partially blind son is caught in the crossfire. And don’t get us started on prize-winning pooch Messi, who won the Palm Dog at this year’s Cannes for his role as Snoop the family hound. The film is at once a masterful puzzlebox and a suspense-fuelled character study, and Justine Triet and Arthur Harari’s razor-sharp writing keep you enthralled until the final act.

A couple of people recommended this to me last year which is an unusual occurrence in itself, but doubly so for a foreign film - so I'm looking forward to it.

I certainly don't need to tell you anything about the plot - it's a simple idea and Empire tells you all you need to know.

Sandra Hüller really is excellent in this - she's German, but here she plays a German who prefers to speak English but is forced to mostly speak French during the trial, which is her third language. She also doesn't fully understand the legal process and her confusion and frustration with it all comes across well - you also don't know her degree of culpability and her actions could easily be those of an innocent or guilty party.  There's also an excellently written scene around a fight between her and Samuel, her husband (Samuel Theis) where their points of view are both understandable but frustratingly inflexible.

Milo Machado-Graner is also excellent as Daniel, the partially blind son - I was surprised to read that he isn't visually impaired (apparently the original plan was to use a blind actor, but they couldn't find one they liked). Swann Arlaud and Antoine Reinartz are also great as the battling lawyers and Samuel Theis deserves a namecheck for the previously mentioned fight scene. And Messi really deserved his Palm Dog because he really is very good in a totally unexpected scene.

The camerawork is unflashy but up to the job and isn't required to be anything more than that. There is some interesting work in the court where sometimes it's stationary and sometimes it swings about, often (it appears) to reflect the confusion that Daniel experiences, but I'm not sure it's entirely necessary. The real quality here lies in the writing - it really is, as Empire puts it "a masterful puzzlebox and a suspense-fuelled character study" with a simple idea fleshed out in a very convincing manner. The court scenes are very well written, with the facts being presented, expanded and challenged in multiple different ways with various degrees of believability and it really does keep you guessing until the end.

As you can probably guess, I liked this - it's all very well done and supremely watchable, with an excellent central performance. It's the kind of film they made loads of in the 80s (usually around a central performance by some US male actor), but we don't see so many of these days - although in the US remake, I suspect the dog will do it (spoiler alert - that doesn't happen here). If you want to watch it, it's streaming on Amazon Prime or available to rent in all the other usual places - and there are far worse options out there for you. 

#18 - Why?