Anatomy of a Fall review – Sandra Hüller is one of the finest to ever do it

Anyone who caught Justine Triet’s delicious 2019 film Sybil ahead of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival would’ve been less surprised when the writer-director’s formidable follow-up, Anatomy of a Fall, scooped the Palme d’Or. This is Hitchcockian hokum of the absolute grandest cru, a throwback murder mystery whose immaculately precise plotting coalesces into a existential conundrum which asks: if a person murders another person and there was no-one around to see them do it, did it actually happen?

German actor Sandra Hüller adds to the case that she’s one of the finest to ever do it, playing slippery Sandra, a commercially successful author who is arrested on suspicion of murder when her commercially unsuccessful author husband Samuel (Samuel Thies) plummets from the balcony of their grandiose pine chalet. Triet and Hüller conspire to not give the audience an inch when it comes to the question of Sandra’s culpability, and this is done via the clever, naturalistic writing and a performance which cleaves to realism even when the material attempts to drag it in other, more lurid directions.

At the centre of it all is the couple’s partially-blind son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), who has to suffer the ignominy of discovering his parents’ marital problems in court. It’s confident, classical filmmaking, yet despite its many formal and thematic pleasures, doesn’t offer a whole lot that’s new.

Little White Lies is committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them.

By becoming a member you can support our independent journalism and receive exclusive essays, prints, weekly film recommendations and more.





ANTICIPATION.
A dark horse Palme d’Or contender yomps to glory. Must-see then, surely? 4

ENJOYMENT.
All pivots on Sandra Hüller’s technically astounding central turn. 4

IN RETROSPECT.
I think it’s one of those films where there’s less to it than meets the eye. But will have to watch again… 3



Directed by
Justine Triet

Starring
Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner

The post Anatomy of a Fall review – Sandra Hüller is one of the finest to ever do it appeared first on Little White Lies.



from Little White Lies https://ift.tt/tJh0765
via IFTTT

Комментарии

Отправить комментарий

Популярные сообщения из этого блога

Handling the Undead – first-look review

A grieving mother and grandfather attempt to go about their daily routine after the death of her young son. An elderly woman says goodbye to her recently deceased partner. A husband is devastated after his wife dies in car accident. These three narratives never quite converge, but all find their trajectories altered when a mysterious event reanimates the dead in Thea Hvistendahl’s debut feature. Adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel of the same name (the author behind Let the Right One In and Border ), Hvistendahl’s take on the zombie genre deviates from the familiar with its glacial pace. The sparse script and sparing use of the typical violence associated with zombie movies are a refreshing change; we learn precious little about the characters on screen, which adds a growing uneasiness to the storytelling. Although it’s hinted that the phenomenon has awoken the dead across the city (and potentially the world) the story remains steadfastly focused on the three separate stor...
Далее...

Migration review – A sorely underpowered duck tale

Изображение
E veryone knows that Salt Bae is one of the most awful humans currently roaming the planet, and you’ll be happy to discover that the folks over at Illumination Animation Studios concur with that fact. A nameless, voiceless parody of Salt Bae turns up as the knife-wielding, indoor micro sunglasses-wearing antagonist in Migration, a light comic caper about a family of mallards (always referred to here as mallards, never ducks?) who accidentally migrate north for the winter and end up in New York City. The evil chef is introduced as someone who keeps a tropical macaw locked up in a very small cage, and he’s shown violently humiliating one of his sous chefs for what he construes to be an inferior plate of food. Yet rather than steak wrapped in gold leaf, duck à l’orange , that 70s classic, is the chef’s speciality, and he’s depicted fetishising a sharp carving blade in every shot he appears, either spinning it around his finger like a six-shooter, or scraping it along the crispy skin o...
Далее...

This Blessed Plot review – a rough-hewn Brit ghost story

Изображение
S ometimes the slovenly industrial mechanisms of traditional film production are just not the right fit for certain projects. British filmmaker Marc Issacs, known for his eccentric riffs on classical documentary form, heads out to the metaphysical wilds of Thaxted in Essex for his strange and intriguing new film, This Blessed Plot, which seeks to demolish certain truisms about that fragile line between objective reality and subjective performance. This is the story of softly-spoken Chinese filmmaker Lori (Yingge Lori Yang) who has travelled to Thaxted in search of a subject for her new work. When she encounters and converses with the ghost of Conrad le Despenser Noel, a socialist priest who died in 1942, she decides that it’s probably best she stick around and see what other spectral shenanigans that this sleepy burg has to offer. Soon after she meets Keith (Keith Martin), a rabid Arsenal football fan and long-time collector of signed trinkets. He invites her to his house to survey...
Далее...