With the competition's 2 best films, Sandra Hüller is this year's queen of Cannes
CANNES, France — "Anatomy of a Fall," which was awarded the Palme d'Or to close out the 76th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, opens with a one-on-one interview that quickly goes south. A successful novelist named Sandra, played by the German actor Sandra Hüller, has invited a graduate student to sit down with her at her family's chalet in the French Alps. The two get along well enough, but then comes an ear-splitting blast of music from upstairs — Sandra's writer husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), is in a foul mood and wants to make it known — and the interview comes to an abrupt halt.
It's a tense, playful opener that hints at the marital and legal drama to come in this intricately plotted mystery from the French director and co-writer Justine Triet. Within minutes, Samuel will have fallen to his death from one of the chalet's upper stories. Sandra is tried for his murder, and she'll spend the rest of the movie being questioned repeatedly, by judges, lawyers and, most wrenchingly, her own adolescent son,
