Every few years, when my bedtime allows me, I enjoy watching Perry Mason reruns on late-night TV. Most mysteries are meant to be followed along with, inviting an expectation that you may solve the crime, along with our protagonist, before the big reveal. If the mystery’s really good, you’re OK with failing to get it right. Perry Mason reruns are fun because one can rarely, if ever, figure out who-did-it – we must indulge Perry’s legal process and idiosyncratic thinking until he figures it out. No one out-solves Perry Mason. It’s fun in a different way, but no less involving; the various characters involved in the case are, often, just as interesting as the legal specifics of the case itself.
Mystery aficionados may be frustrated with Anatomy Of A Fall (Anatomie D’Une Chute) (France, 2023), the artfully deliberate new film from Cannes Palme D’Or– winning French filmmaker Justine Triet. The prelude is simple enough to grasp; successful writer Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller, impressive as always) lives in a fair-sized chalet in the snowy French Alps with her husband Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis), a writer as well. They’re both raising their pre-teen son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), who met with a nasty accident (at 4) that rendered him almost completely blind. But he’s amiable, clearly smart, potentially talented, and has his border collie, Snoop, as an almost constant companion. On this particular day, Sandra is entertaining a guest, a young writing student, Zoé (Camille Rutherford), who wants to interview her. Daniel is giving Snoop a dog-bath in a big metal tub.
The unseen Samuel, working on renovations in the top floor of the house, starts up some very loud working music for himself (the Caribbean-flavored instrumental backing of 50-Cent’s ‘P.I.M.P.’). Sandra assures Zoé that it’s what Samuel always does, it’s no big deal; Sandra pours them some red wine and they try to continue, but the music is clearly too intrusive for their otherwise-pleasant conversation to continue. Sandra curtly calls off the visit, amiably but apologetically promises to connect with Zoé in Grenoble very soon (where Zoé lives, presumably), and sends her on her way, waving goodbye to her from the second-floor balcony. A bundled-up Daniel, with Snoop on a leash, follows her out into the snow a few minutes later for a long walk.
It’s curious that Sandra didn’t simply go upstairs and ask Samuel to turn it down for a little bit. She and Zoé were getting on well, approaching flirtatiousness – it seems odd that she chose to end their meeting so abruptly.
After a short while, Daniel returns home with Snoop (with music still blasting from upstairs), but Snoop suddenly jerks him forcefully along in reaction to a bloody and motionless Samuel on the ground outside, just under the attic windows. Daniel’s sobbing and yelling draws out Sandra, who is just as horrified as Daniel. Ambulances and authorities are summoned, and the game may be afoot.
The ensuing narrative is, indeed, the “anatomy” of the Maleski family, and what might have led to Samuel’s death. Sandra reconnects with an old friend, Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud), who will represent Sandra’s interests as her attorney (maitre). The obvious question is “Did He Jump or Was He Pushed?” – and the obvious suspect for the latter is his wife. Sandra isn’t immediately charged; in fact, it’s pretty clear that the vigorous and efficient police investigation is more about the truth of the circumstances rather than landing on a perpetrator, which is also a pretty good summary of Triet’s narrative strategy as well. All three members of the family, living or dead, are unreliable narrators in their way. Sandra and Samuel struggled with where they’re living, the conditions of each of their careers, their relationship with their didn’t-used-to-be blind son, and with each other as a couple. Daniel is suddenly surrounded by caregivers tasked with buffering the effects of the tragedy, at least for now, rather than letting him confront it on his own terms. There’s also the issue of his living with, and comforting, his mother, who may be a murderer. Their family friend Monica (Sophie Fillières) has tended Daniel from time to time, but the court assigns a social worker, Marge Berger (Jehnny Beth) to stay with him and prevent any interference with Daniel and/or his testimony.
We’re given enormous amounts of information, and the subsequent events and emotions that those circumstances evoked. We’re given a worthy and spirited courtroom drama with serious and committed advocates and judges (Antoine Reinartz is especially sharp as the prosecutor/Avocat général). We’re even given a verdict.
But what we don’t have, frankly, is Perry Mason, taking all of those factual and human threads and declaring *BOOM* here’s what really happened. Triet here (with her reliable writing partner Arthur Harari) revels in the complexities, the details, the incongruities and the unpredictability of her characters. The film looks great, shot by Simon Beaufils, but isn’t particularly cinematic; it’s too fussy and repetitive, is probably 45 minutes too long, and at one point I exasperatingly decided that they couldn’t tuck in all of the loose ends, gave up, and stuck with the story that the ambiguities were all on purpose. I’ve surrendered to the fact that the whole film really does probably hold together, it really is all on purpose, and it’s all admirably done. But the world of the film is its own, hermetically sealed, neither welcoming nor challenging.
Anatomy Of A Fall is in general release at a theater near you.
Periscope In The Bathtub 