Anatomy of a Fall (2023) on Netflix
NR20232h 30mCrimeDramaThriller
Novelist Sandra Voyter lives near Grenoble with her husband Samuel and their eleven-year-old son Daniel. Daniel finds his father's body after a fall, and Sandra insists it was an accident.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.6/10237,825 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
At the family's chalet near Grenoble, the novelist Sandra Voyter interviews a student while her husband, the university lecturer Samuel Maleski, plays music in the attic, and she reschedules the meeting. The student drives off, and Daniel, the couple's eleven-year-old son, whose sight is impaired, goes out with the dog Snoop. When they come home, Daniel finds his father dead, apparently from a fall. Sandra holds that the fall was accidental; Vincent, a lawyer and an old friend, suggests suicide; she remembers that six months earlier, after he stopped taking antidepressants, Samuel tried to overdose on aspirin. The investigation turns up Daniel's shifting accounts, a wound to Samuel's head, and an audio recording of a quarrel between the couple. Sandra is indicted for homicide.
Cast
- Julien Comteas Forensic Pathologist
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- On set, Sandra Hüller repeatedly asked director Justine Triet whether her character Sandra Voyter was guilty, and Triet refused to answer, instead instructing her to play the role as innocent, which Triet later called "very sneaky".
- The song Samuel blasts on his stereo on the day he dies was written as Dolly Parton's "Jolene", but the film could not acquire the rights, so "P.I.M.P." was used instead.
- Justine Triet, who directed and co-wrote the film, said she was fascinated by the Amanda Knox case, in which a young American woman was accused of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007.
- A sex scene between Sandra Hüller's Sandra and her lawyer Vincent was written into the film but scrapped after producer Marie-Ange Luciani found it too '80s.
- Anatomy of a Fall became the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes, after Julia Ducournau's Titane in 2021 and Jane Campion's The Piano in 1993.
- In September 2023 France's Oscar committee chose The Taste of Things over Anatomy of a Fall, sparking controversy and claims from French insiders that Justine Triet was being punished for criticizing President Emmanuel Macron's pension-reform crackdown in her Cannes speech.
- The courtroom scenes were filmed in the courthouse of Saintes in Charente-Maritime, where a large allegory of justice was hung as a backdrop; the courthouse kept it after filming.
