Anatomy of a Fall Review

Triet's screenplay, written with Arthur Harari, understands something most courtroom films do not: a trial is a competition between narratives, and the evidence matters less than who is fluent enough to shape it. The film withholds the fall itself and never grants a flashback, so the audience sits exactly where the jury sits, weighing a recorded argument that plays in full and is devastating precisely because both people in it are right. Sandra Huller performs in three languages and turns the enforced English of the courtroom into a visible handicap, which the film builds into a theme about who is permitted to explain themselves.

Milo Machado-Graner and the dog Messi carry the last act, and the boy's decision about what to remember is the film's real verdict. Swann Arlaud gives the lawyer a warmth that stays legible without ever tipping into romance. The photography is functional rather than expressive, and the middle stretch of testimony sprawls. What lingers is that argument scene, the finest piece of writing about a marriage in recent cinema.