When French filmmaker Justine Triet received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last May for the remarkable film “Anatomy of a Fall,” which premieres this Friday in Quebec, she used her stage to shoot red bullets at the Macron government shooting from 3 million viewers.
Published at 2:03 am. Updated at 6:00 am.
“The commercialization of culture that the neoliberal government defends is breaking the cultural exception of France, the same cultural exception without which I would not be here today,” said the 45-year-old filmmaker as she accepted her award.
The Macron government’s reaction was immediate. French Culture Minister Rima Abdul-Malak described Justine Triet’s “extreme left” speech as “ungrateful and unfair.” Annoyed, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne refused to discover Anatomy of a Fall at the end of September, when more than a million French people had already seen the film, because she believed that the director needed to “rethink her relationship to reality”.
And it’s a shame that only the third woman in the 76 years of the Cannes Film Festival has won a Palme d’Or…
“I think it would have been interesting to watch the film to really see my “relationship with reality,” to use Elisabeth Borne’s words,” Justine Triet tells me in an interview. I think these are people who, in my opinion, are not very interested in what I actually talked about in my speech. »
Justine Triet’s first films, unique short films, were shot with three pieces of string. In Cannes, the author and filmmaker dedicated her Palme d’Or to all young directors who cannot make films. “I was able to find my place 15 years ago in a slightly less hostile world, where it was still possible to make mistakes and start over,” said the Paris School of Fine Arts graduate in painting.
PHOTO TAYLOR JEWELL, INVISION, PROVIDED BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Justine Triet
Of course, in France we are still in a privileged situation compared to the rest of the world. But I think that there isn’t necessarily a very strong vision of culture.
Justine Triet, director
Because the French government didn’t like it, “Anatomy of a Fall,” a brilliant legal drama, became a popular and critical success in France and was warmly received abroad. In the United States, some expect the film to appear at the Oscars, even though it was not selected by France to compete for the Oscar for Best International Film because a committee chose the more academic film “The Passion of Dodin Bouffant.” ” by Tran Anh Hung preferred.
Suicide or murder?
Anatomy of a Fall tells the story of Sandra (the great Sandra Hülser), a writer accused of murdering her lover Samuel (Samuel Theis), and Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), her boyfriend, dead in front of her home in the high mountains A visually impaired son, 11 years old, is found.
Is it a murder or a suicide? Did Samuel escape out the window or was he pushed to his death? Sandra protests her innocence, but even her lawyer, an old friend, seems to have doubts and her own son, who is attending the trial, ultimately no longer knows how to separate fact from fiction.
Justine Triet had already set part of the story of her second feature film “Victoria” (with Virginie Efira, in a more comical form) to music in court. “As a framework, I think it’s interesting to finally not necessarily get to the details of the crime – or whether she did it or not – but rather to observe the more mundane things of the couple that might be more mundane or more painful to watch , if it wasn’t a process. »
PHOTO SCOTT GARFITT, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Milo Machado Graner, Sandra Hülser, Justine Triet and Swann Arlaud in Cannes
We quickly understand that this anatomy of a case, a title with a double meaning, is also the autopsy of a couple. Samuel, a French writer who can hardly wait, looks after his son every day while his German-born partner celebrates international success. He feels unbalanced while she looks unimpressed. He seems jealous of her success and the time she gives herself to write; She is angry at him for forcing her family to settle in the Alps of her childhood and live in his language.
Justine Triet, who co-wrote “Anatomy of a Fall” with her lover Arthur Harari (who also wrote her previous film “Sybil”), has explored the tensions within the couple since her first feature, the excellent “The Battle of Solferino.” , explored with his companion playing a supporting role. Arthur Harari, filmmaker to whom we owe Black Diamond (starring Niels Schneider), plays the famous lawyer Georges Kiejman in Cédric Khan’s The Goldman Trial, the opening film of the 29th Cinémania Festival.
Justine Triet not only wanted to tell the story of a couple falling apart, but to do so without avoiding mediocrity, she explains. “That said, I think we really had to go to places that weren’t necessarily very beautiful or very fancy. We really had to deal with something pretty ugly and pretty shameful. »
A crucial scene in the film, a flashback to an extremely tense argument, required about fifty versions, the filmmaker admits. “I wasn’t happy with the result for a long time. I said to myself, “But it’s a failure!” The movie will be a failure because I don’t like these characters.” And at a certain point we found a way to enter the scene with Arthur, with this idea of time, that was stolen from the other. Afterwards we said to each other that in an argument there is always one of the two who wants to argue more than the other. »
PHOTO ARCHIVE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Milo Machado Graner in “Anatomy of a Fall.”
This very powerful scene about the concessions and compromises of life as a couple – they speak English, which is neither of their native languages - descends into an escalation of accusations. Far from Manichean, subtle and brilliant, this confrontation (reminiscent of the cinema of John Cassavetes) allows us both to better understand Samuel and Sandra’s resentment and, in turn, to respond to their arguments.
“I still leave the last word to Sandra,” explains Justine Triet, “but it is true that we tried to be fair and agree with everyone.” »
Obviously, in the process, as it is in the eyes of society, Sandra’s rather dominant attitude will turn against her. And that’s ultimately what’s fascinating. This means that when a woman starts gobbling up space and perhaps doing what most men do in the other direction, it is less accepted and more likely to be criticized.
Justine Triet, director
Anatomy of a Fall, which draws its story more from doubt than from certainty, raises more questions than it offers answers. What did Daniel (the great Milo Machado Graner) see and hear? In a scene of unforgettable formal originality, the son testifies in court about a conversation with his father before drawing conclusions from it. Is he right, is he wrong?
“In a way, children never know who their parents are,” believes Justine Triet. I think this idea underlies the entire film: that our parents escape us and that we ourselves have to reconstruct the story to truly understand who they are. The fact that Daniel was blind arose from the idea of putting him in the same position as us. That means we missed something and he missed something too. And we will have to make do with these deficits. »
To fill the gap and read between the lines of this great, enigmatic film.
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