“You see some films, and they’re interesting,” says the French director Justine Triet, “and then there are others that affect you in a very violent way.” It’s fair to say that Triet’s latest film, Anatomy of a Fall, has affected viewers, and her own life, intensely. In May, she went from being simply a well-respected rising auteur to a Cannes Palme d’Or winner – and a figure of national controversy.
Anatomy of a Fall has scored more than a million admissions at the French box office. The film has galvanised audiences with its depiction of the conjugal stresses between a woman and a man, both fiction writers; the drama centres on the courtroom inquiry after the man falls to his death from a window of their home.
