Anatomie d'une chute

“There is a bracing and chilly high-mindedness about Justine Triet’s psychothriller. Sandra Hüller’s calm directness as an actor is what gives the film its texture, substance and emotional force. She anchors it in a kind of accessible reality: we naturally sympathise with her, and yet Triet shows us that she is capable of transparent lies, lies which are almost credible because Hüller is such a plausible personality. The film does not signpost the traditional twists and turns and dramatic reversals, but keeps a cool distance, letting us wonder if Sandra is guilty or not, and we are kept guessing until the end. It’s a lowkey, almost downbeat drama, but with something invigoratingly cerebral.”

“Sandra Hüller shines. A cerebral smash that might finally bring the Best Actress award that its star, Sandra Hüller, was cruelly denied in 2016. Hüller’s screen magnetism cannot be denied. A ferociously intelligent and deceptively playful drama that uses genre as a Trojan horse through which to tell the story of a normal family’s sudden implosion. The director’s masterstroke is to subvert the pleasures of genre convention to explore issues of schadenfreude and plain morbid human curiosity. Quite brilliantly unsatisfying, in a subtle and slyly Hitchcockian way that interrogates the whole notion of “satisfaction” in the context of a murder trial. And at its heart is Hüller’s performance, a haunting and emotional tour de force that stays long in the mind and puts her right up there in the top tier of European talent.”