Keswick Film Club - Anatomy Of A Fall

Synopsis

The Palme d'Or winner at Cannes this year is a whodunnit, deliberately built around uncertainty, where marriage is the prime suspect.

Sandra, a German author is married to Samuel, a French aspiring author. They live in an Alpine chalet with their visually impaired son Daniel. Their marriage is argumentative, which becomes especially important when Samuel is found dead outside in the snow. Did he fall? Did he commit suicide? ...Or was he pushed? In a world where perceptions are more important than truth, the police accuse Sandra of murder. But did she do it?

Their marriage is picked over by both sides in the court, where any given 'fact' can be seen to have different meaning - "Marriage, the film suggests, is like a mosaic. One or two highly coloured tiles might catch the eye but they can't, on their own, show the whole picture" - Wendy Ide, Guardian. Much of the film, then, is a courtroom drama, but Wendy Ide goes on to say "A genre that can be prone to stuffiness and overly waffly dialogue, the courtroom drama here is electric, restlessly dynamic and compulsively watchable".

Is she guilty? You will have to decide. "Each individual presents a starkly different vision of their shared existence - yet it's hard to say that either of them is wrong. Does the truth lie somewhere in between or does it encompass both of their realities? Or does it (gasp) simply not exist? The curse of wanting to know everything, it turns out, is the eventual realization that we know nothing" - Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine.

Can you resist coming to see for yourself..?