Anatomy of a Fall (2023) dir Justine Triet
This won this year's Oscar and Bafta Best Original Screenplay awards, and it is a very good story. It stars Sandra Hüller as author Sandra, living with her husband and son in the French Alps. When her husband is found dead, having apparently fallen from an upper floor balcony of their house, an investigation is launched and, eventually, she is prosecuted for murder. I would not call this a thriller. It's neither about police trying to catch a killer nor a typical court room drama of an innocent person falsely accused. We simply watch the story unfold and see the evidence, not being told anything more than we would if we were one of the jury. I think the idea is you make your own mind up about whether Sandra is guilty or not. A lot of it is played out at the trial, but whether it's because it's a French court, and they do things very differently to British and American courts, or just the specifics of this case, it's not like any court-room based film I have ever seen before. It feels a lot more real than a story being told by a film usually does, but still not like a drama-documentary either. It's mainly in English, Sandra is German, her husband and son French, they, tend to speak in English to each other and she gives most of her evidence at the trial in English too. The acting is very good, particularly from Hüller. It's well worth the awards and nominations it got.
9 / 10