Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

An easy film to fall for, but a hard one to forget, Justine Triet's Palme d'Or winner is a murder mystery where the real death is romance. Powered by extraordinarily layered performances from Sandra Hüller and Milo Machado Graner, this French courtroom drama digs deeper beyond the murder, slipping between genres with mercurial precision as the secrets of a marriage in turmoil are ripped apart in the public eye. Extremely tense in all the right ways, Anatomy of a Fall is guilty of being great, in no small part thanks to the work of Messi, a French Border Collie dog who steals every scene.

Justine Triet’s elegant, elusive, cerebral film, about a novelist who may or may not have shoved her lecturer husband out of a window, is never keen to let you know exactly what you’re watching, and Sandra Hüller’s lead character isn’t someone who neatly sets out all her qualities and flaws for us in the first ten minutes. We are left to judge, to guess, to discern the dynamics of the marriage and the family, just as the court has to work out whether a murder has taken place. It’s a puzzle that’s all the more satisfying for being one you can't quite solve.