Lesson one: don’t watch a 2 1/2 hour slow French film at 9:30 pm at night at the Comedy Theatre.

I worked hard to minimise the micro naps in this tonally odd drama set in the French Alps. The winner of the Palme d’Or and directed by Justine Triet, it, according to Indiewire, “holds the ambient tensions and illogical loose ends of domestic life against the harsh and rational light of the legal system.” Perhaps.

Sandra (Sandra Hüller who was so wonderful in Toni Erdmann (2016)) lives with husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis) and vision-impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) in the isolated mountain chalet that is the renovation dream of Samuel. When Daniel finds his dad dead in the snow in front of the chalet, we spent a few hours trying to determine if he fell or was pushed by Sandra.

There seems to be no evidence that he was pushed, but this doesn’t stop lots of fast and loose speculation in an almost cartoonish trial that pulls apart their marriage and Sandra’s character. Of interest is the gender characterisation of the couple; Sandra is a stereotypical male – ambitious, self-absorbed, only marginally maternal, and oblivious to the needs of her ‘stay at home dad’ husband. The way she justifies her infidelity seems essentially hetero masculine. I’m not sure there is any depth to this, but it makes for an interestingly complex character. Samuel is elusive, deliberately so, as we only ever see him once, leaving us to try and understand everything and nothing through Sandra.

I was expecting more of a revelation at the end and it all seems a bit pointless – even Daniel’s vision impairment seems a plot device than a meaningful characterisation. I left feeling a bit cheated, ruminating on the meaning of the title, and whose fall we were dissecting.

Director: Justine Triet
Origin: France (2023)
Language: English, French, German with English subtitles
Genre: Drama , Mystery

---

Have you seen this film? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.