ANATOMY OF A FALL****

Writer-director Justine Triet's Palme D'Or winning ANATOMY OF A FALL struck me less as a masterpiece of direction than a well-acted murder mystery.  

In my more mischievous moments I thought of it as BASIC INSTINCT as channelled through Agatha Christie.  Think about it:  Sandra Hueller (THE ZONE OF INTEREST) stars as an unapologetically successful, bisexual, author who is accused of killing her husband, of even referring to his future murder in her work, and has a somewhat flirtatious relationship with both the young journalist who interviews her at the start of the film, and with her attorney later on. In both films, we discuss gender roles, including toxic masculinity being undermined by a strong woman. In this case, the accused refuses to pander to her husband's need for more parental help and time to focus on his work. Bluntly, she tells him and the court to stop blaming her for his inability to finish his work, and his jealousy of her success. As the film progresses it becomes clear that her husband has been emasculated not only by her success but by her having an affair with a woman.  Both films also talk about consent. In BASIC INSTINCT it's sexual consent: in ANATOMY OF A FALL it's whether the husband recording his interactions with his wife was done with consent. 

Of course, this is a differently serious endeavour, and the genre it ploughs is that of courtroom drama.  The twist in the tale, or should I say tail, is that the key witness is the couple's son.  He has the cruel experience of hearing the state's prosecution of his mother, and has to parse his own memories of the fall, and prior conversations with his father, to work out what he heard, and what it meant. Milo Machado Graner is superb in this role.

I really liked how Triet raised questions about gender roles in marriage and how far a single argument or episode can be taken as indicative of a relationship as a whole. It's great to see Sandra as a well-drawn, nuanced strong female character who is allowed at times to be "unlikeable". And I love the moral ambiguity that is not entirely resolved, even when we do know whodunnit. Is this a Palme D'or winning film for me? No. But it's a very fine, grown-up, character-led drama of the type I am pleased is still getting made. 

ANATOMY OF A FALL has a running time of 152 minutes and is rated R. It played Cannes 2023 where it won not just the Palme D'Or but also the Palme Dog! It went on limited release in the USA this weekend and opens in the UK on November 10th.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD / GRACE A DIEU

Francois Ozon's BY THE GRACE OF GOD is a film that stands apart from the rest of his oeuvre.  Showing he can match his style to the subject, he has made a sober, reflective, beautifully paced and acted film about the most serious of topics - that of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, and to compound that crime, its institutional cover up for decades.  By now we are sickeningly familiar with the story of paedophile priests being found out, and simply moved on to another parish to commit their crimes on another unwitting flock.  We are familiar with the heartbreak testimony of survivors and the seemingly interminable process of bringing these men to real criminal (as opposed to ecclesiastical) justice. But this film remains compelling because it's such a delicately, beautifully mined character study of how a group of men cope differently with their abuse.  And despite the darkness of the material it's ultimately a quiet film that builds to something rather hopeful and wonderful  - as these men form a kind of familial supportive bond. That might or might not be enough for all of them to pull through their trauma, but it's in this carefully mined character study that the film is at its most compelling.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD has a running time of 137 minutes.  The film played Berlin 2019 where it won the Silver Bear. It also played the BFI London Film Festival. It is now on release in the USA and in UK cinemas and on the Curzon Home Cinema streaming service.