Anatomy of a Fall | Telescope Film
Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d'une chute)

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User Rating

  • France
  • 2023
  • · 151m

Director Justine Triet
Cast Sandra Hüller, Milo Machado-Graner, Swann Arlaud, Saadia Bentaïeb, Jehnny Beth, Samuel Theis
Genre Crime, Drama

When Sandra’s husband is found dead outside their isolated French chalet, she is indicted on suspicion of his murder. The trial exposes intimate, complex details about their marriage and Sandra’s work as a writer, and leaves the only witness, their blind son Daniel, with a moral dilemma.

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What are users saying?

Devin Bosley

It’s been a long time since a film has stuck with me like this one, and not only because of Messi’s groundbreaking performance as Snoop. Justine Triet is an absolute genius! The dialogue is so rich, and the characters are so real and complex; every aspect of this production epitomizes what makes film so special as an art form. In particular, what this film has to say about artists, their work, and whether or not their work reflects their actions or beliefs is so interesting. For fans of mystery, this is a feast. Did Sandra murder her husband? That’s for you to decide.

Conner Dejecacion

I'm super late to the party but I'm really glad I watched this. The intersecting narratives of guilt and the diminishing returns of the question "did she do it" kept me enthralled in my seat. Add to that the juicy courtroom drama propelled by the devil-like prosecutor and silver fox defender (though who is really the good one there?) and you have a gripping drama about family, justice, and guilt.

Summer Goldstein

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this one. Complex, gripping, and beautifully shot. Before seeing ANATOMY OF A FALL, I heard people remarking on how blown-away they were by performances in the film – and still none of that prepared me for the stunning displays of acting by Sandra Hüller and Milo Machado-Graner (and Messi the dog!).

What are critics saying?

100

The Irish Times by Tara Brady

It’s a knotty, fascinating delve into the French legal system, the nature of truth and the institution of marriage.

100

Washington Post by Ann Hornaday

If it sometimes feels a bit contrived, and if its conclusion will leave some viewers unsatisfied, Triet has made a film that succeeds brilliantly — on terms that are as exacting, rigorous and precise as her unflappable heroine.

100

Original-Cin by Liam Lacey

As an intelligent, adult examination of a marriage gone sour, wrapped up in the trappings of a legal thriller, Anatomy of a Fall is original and engaging, though perhaps not so profound an investigation into truth as some of its advocates have claimed.

100

Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

Triet’s movie is a monument to the ambiguous and unknown, a labyrinth of half-glimpsed causes and vague, sinister effects.

100

Rolling Stone by David Fear

Though some may come for the murder mystery, it’s Triet’s way of using that genre to get at deeper notions of love turning to hate, and tiny marital fissures that turn into chasms, that really makes this something close to an anti-romantic masterpiece.

100

The Associated Press by Lindsey Bahr

Anatomy of a Fall may not be a film with many concrete answers, ultimately, but the truths it uncovers are irrefutable.

100

Collider by Therese Lacson

Part true crime legal thriller and part family drama, Triet's Palme d'Or winner is a thrilling story about perception, truth, and ambition.

100

The Telegraph by Tim Robey

This whole film has a wizardry to it which you’ll be thinking about for days.

100

The Playlist by Elena Lazic

Triet’s breathtakingly intelligent and subtly perverse masterpiece takes the long way through the cold and the snow to address, in nuanced but never ambiguous terms, the ineffable and irreducible mystery at the heart of deep relationships — between two partners, between parents and their children, between words and the world.

91

IndieWire by Ben Croll

As it calls the institution of marriage to the stand, Triet’s piercing film holds the ambient tensions and illogical loose ends of domestic life against the harsh and rational light of a legal system that searches for order in chaos.