FILM PICK OF THE WEEK
Winner of this year’s Best Original Screenplay Academy Award, this expertly crafted psychological thriller from French writer-director Justine Triet is certainly one of the most memorable films of 2023. And it benefits enormously from a strong central performance from Sandra Hüller.
She plays successful German novelist Sandra Voyter who is living on the edge of a remote village in the French Alps with her French husband Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis), a former academic and would-be author, and their 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) who is partially sighted. The marriage is clearly going through some difficulties. In the tense opening sequence Samuel deliberately disrupts an interview Sandra is giving to a young female journalist by playing music in a neighbouring room so loudly that it drowns out their conversation and it has to be abandoned.
Shortly afterwards Sandra goes upstairs to try and have a nap while Daniel takes their dog out for a walk with his guide dog, when he returns, he finds his father lying dead on the ground next to their chalet, with a wound to his head, having apparently fallen from an upstairs window. Or was he pushed? If so, who by, for what motive? And was his head wound inflicted before the fall or on the way down? The police arrive and ask probing questions. There is no sign of a break-in or intruder. Sandra contacts old lawyer friend Vincent Renzi (Swann Artaud), who agrees to represent her when she is arrested on suspicion of murder.
Sandra maintains that she is innocent of any wrongdoing, but then she is caught out in a couple of lies and the doubts start to creep in. The script skilfully plays with audience expectations and assumptions – forcing rethinks and double-takes on almost everything in the first half of the movie. It is incredibly well done and thanks to Hüller’s cool, controlled and precise playing of the character of Sandra, she comes across as entirely plausible. Her hesitant answers in the courtroom could well be, as she points out, because she is being questioned in French and not her mother tongue of German. She is curiously detached and a little unemotional, yet still elicits our sympathy. But are we being fooled? It is a fine balancing act, but the narrative keeps the tension high and the question of guilt or innocence open.