Anatomy of a Fall

 

Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall is a riveting suspicious-death procedural that's wrapped around a domestic drama of incompatibility and "blinding" self-regard. 

I use the term "blinding" deliberately and ironically because the prime witness to the suspicious death is the son of the couple living in a chalet in Grenoble (Sandra Hüller and Samuel Theis), who lost his vision in an accident.

The boy, played by the impressive child actor Milo Machado Graner, has been a silent witness to his parents' acrimonious relationship, which has worsened since the family moved from London to the Alps. Daniel's mother, Sandra, is charged with the murder of his father, Samuel, whose body the boy found in the snow, a fatal wound to his head.

Triet exposes through the investigation and the court trial competing scenarios to explain Samuel's death, with the chief prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz) describing jealousy and resentment between the couple, a successful writer, Sandra, married to a struggling writer / college professor. Sandra's attorney is a former love interest named Vincent (Swann Arlaud) who acknowledges that the circumstances point to Sandra as the culprit but promotes another cause of Samuel's death.

Anatomy's structure is pretty standard for whodunits but departs from it when piecing together the competing views -- reality and illusion -- about the couple's relationship and the role Daniel's blinding accident played in the dissolution of what may or may not have been true love. So much weight is put on the boy's presence in the lives of these two egoists and the changes to the family's dynamic after he was blinded that one wonders how (or even if) he's remained sane. 

And therein lies the biggest mystery of Anatomy of a Fall, and one the film does not answer readily. And that makes the fascinating picture all the more so.