Anatomy of a Fall Review

 By Rory McMorrow

This courtroom thriller sees a woman suspected of murdering her husband. The obvious question, ‘did 

she do it?’ is, cleverly, not the film’s main message. 

We begin with our protagonist, Sandra (the sublime, Sandra Huller), a German-born author, being 

interviewed by a student in the downstairs of a cosy-looking, homely, French chalet. 

Initially, all seems inconspicuous. Samuel (Samuel Theis) works upstairs, hoping to renovate the 

chalet into an Airbnb to ease the family’s financial problems. 

The couple’s eleven-year-old child, (breathtakingly played by Milo Machado Graner) Daniel, takes 

Snoop, the steadfastly companionable colly dog, out for a walk. 

When Daniel returns, panting as he mounts the slight incline of their snowy drive, Snoop begins to bark and suddenly, we see what at. 

Samuel’s still body lying, deafeningly quiet, on the ground, his blood spatter spewing out into the 

crisp, white, surrounding snow. Dead. 

Look up and we might note that the chalet’s attic window is wide open. So, as French director 

Justine Triet cunningly ensnares us in, the seemingly apparent question is: did Samuel jump? (By 

accident or suicide?) Or was he pushed? Each possibility is as bleak as the next. 

The latter theory is what Sandra stands accused of as she quickly brings an old lawyer acquaintance 

(Swann Arlaud very much fitting the lawyer-y brief) in. 

Naturally, the case goes to Court which is where the real meat of the film takes place. 

Antoine Reinartz delightfully antagonists (most of) the QFT audience with a convincingly cruel 

showing as a relentlessly diligent Prosecutor, keen to convict Sandra as Samuel’s murderer. 

And as the legal minefields explode, Triet gives us all this desperately sombre news, not from the 

perspective of an adult, but masterfully through the lenses of young Daniel. As the person who 

found Samuel, finds himself presenting evidence and under the grill of Reinartz’s unrelenting 

Questions. 

Nor is it a one-man show. On the contrary, all the (refreshingly minimalist) cast shine from 

Camille Rutherford as Sandra’s interviewer just hours before Samuel’s body was found. 

Also, Anne Rotger as the President, firmly overseeing all of the court proceedings, including the 

delicacy of Daniel’s situation and whether or not a child can sit in on a legal debate about whether 

one of his parents pushed the other to his death. 

As you may suspect from the title, we are indeed treated to a, forensically, deep dive of Sandra and 

Samuel’s marriage, in what proves to be a gripping plot full of characters to love and loathe, equally. 

Although the Court does deliver a decision in the end, Triet’s fabulous script, aided by Huller’s 

performance, means that you leave, engrossed, and engaged, but with more questions than answers 

as she instructs you to draw your own findings from a case of unique, layered in literacy, emotionally 

excelling, complexity. 

Written by Rory McMorrow 

Edited by Georgia McPoland