Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, awarded at the Golden Globes in Hollywood, selected in five categories at the Oscars, Anatomy of a fall is also among the favorites for the 49th César ceremony, scheduled for February 23.
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This Wednesday morning, the César Academy, which awards French cinema awards each year, made public the list of films that came first in the first round of voting. Without surprise, Anatomy of a fallby director Justine Triet, wins eleven nominations just behind the film The animal kingdom by Thomas Cailley who won twelve.
Anatomy of a fall once again prances at the head of the pack after being nominated in five categories including best film, best director, best screenplay and best actress at the Hollywood Oscars. Since winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023, the film has had an exemplary run, particularly internationally. Which is quite rare for a French film.
Controversies
French cinema is not in the spotlight so often and with such intensity. We are perhaps a little more happy about it than usual because of the upset meeting in Cannes in May 2023. The comments exchanged at the time between the French government and the director had dampened the atmosphere. On the podium, Justine Triet dedicated her triumph to the voiceless, those who had fought against pension reform; she also denounced the commodification of Culture.
These comments were deemed inappropriate, unfair and ungrateful by the former Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul-Malak, who highlighted the mass of public money invested by the French state in cinema. The former Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, even said that she would not go to see the film.
A few weeks later, there is another feature film, The passion of Dodin Bouffanta film about love and French cuisine, by Franco-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung, with Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel who was chosen to represent France at the Oscars. At the time, this choice was seen as an insult to Justine Triet.
The public responded
The public was also there. Almost 1.5 million spectators have gone to see the film in theaters since its release at the end of August. It’s a lot for a film shot in French and English, without a French star, even if Sandra Hüller is a huge German actress.
It is undoubtedly the subject of the film and the way in which it is treated which is striking. Anatomy of a fall recounts the trial of a woman whose husband was found dead, apparently having fallen from the roof. Accidental fall or argument? The only witnesses are their visually impaired son and his dog. Through the trial of this woman, the director examines the male-female roles within a couple, the power relationships, the unsaid, money, success, jealousy, sexual freedom. What do we ultimately blame this woman for? Perhaps to have assigned to herself the place in the couple that men generally occupy?
The screenplay was written jointly by Justine Triet and her partner, himself a director and actor, Arthur Harari, and that is undoubtedly why it rings true, because it echoes intimate debates, questions about the relationships between men and women which run through our contemporary societies.
Read alsoCannes 2023: “Anatomy of a fall”, director Justine Triet “obsessed” by the falling man