Avis des critiques

Anatomy of a Fall is as cerebral and ambivalent as its central turn from an irreplaceable Hüller... Between the absolute poles of ‘guilty’ and ‘not guilty’ lies a many-shaded spectrum of culpability and complicity. In vivid, clean lines, Anatomy of a Fall navigates this moral morass and exposes the absurdity of trying to pluck from it a simplistic, binary verdict.

Anatomy of a Fall defies most expectations one might have towards a courtroom drama of such proportions, i.e. marital, but its depth of emotional competency is something to be cherished.

Anatomy of a Fall inspires the most of Triet’s output so far, even if its plotting can be a bit circular and verbose... Still, it’s an immensely enjoyable, idiosyncratic entertainment.

[Anatomy of a Fall] is an intellectual thriller of rare calibre, assembled so precisely and deepening so richly it continually takes your breath away. This script is a diamond.

Full of gradually unpeeled complexities, Anatomy of a Fall is a family drama that wears the clothes of a crime procedural – a whodunit where marriage itself feels like a prime suspect.

Exhausting rather than sensational, Anatomy of a Fall is the kind of hyper-articulate cinema still vibrant in French filmmaking and all but extinct in most contemporary offerings of English language cinema. Similar in approach to her 2013 debut Age of Panic, Triet’s latest solidifies her stance as one of France’s impressive contemporary filmmakers.

Triet’s breathtakingly intelligent and subtly perverse masterpiece takes the long way through the cold and the snow to address, in nuanced but never ambiguous terms, the ineffable and irreducible mystery at the heart of deep relationships.

Whereas the filmmaker’s earlier work tracked legal dispassion and personal collapse along parallel narrative tracks, “Anatomy of a Fall” overlays them to devastating effect, surpassing the modest pleasures of a cerebral whodunnit by recognizing that the family tragedy is the same no matter what.

Triet has taken a familiar genre (the courtroom drama) and turned that format on its head... [she] assumes [a] jagged, pseudo-documentary style, taking two and a half hours to excavate and unpack the secrets of this hypothetical couple.

[Anatomy of a Fall] is a gripping and gratifyingly rich drama: part legal procedural, part portrait of a complicated woman, part snapshot of a marriage on the brink and part coming-of-age narrative... This is a nuanced work, resisting the teasing, Kabuki-like quality that characterizes even “prestige” efforts like HBO’s recent The Staircase.

“Anatomy of a Fall” takes two hours of conversations and makes them both provocative and propulsive... [The film] is straightforward in its style but sophisticated in the way Triet doles out information. It’s tense, unbearably so at times, but also subtle and satisfying.

Featuring a compelling central performance from Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall takes a while to engage, but turns into a twisty, thought-provoking drama. That’s thanks in part to Hüller’s nuanced rendition of a widow who may be a husband-killer, or may simply be an independent, difficult bisexual woman.