If you were to forensically analyse a single half-hour in the shared life of a couple, would it be possible to extrapolate out from that point to deduce the full shape of their life together? Could you chart their emotional topography from a single fight or a passive-aggressive gesture? As the film progresses, we see there’s no more emotional truth to this kind of analysis than there is in reading a novel as autobiography.
ANATOMY OF A FALL has a wonderful sense of assurance in how it deliberately pulls our sense of identification with the protagonists in different directions over the course of the investigation and the trial and how it revels in the ambiguities that lie between fiction and reality, of what is said and what actually happened, in Sandra Hüller’s enigmatic expressions, and ultimately in the clouded eyes of the son of two writers who sees more than people think.