Daniel is presented as a talented pianist, with an intellect of one well beyond his years. He is both strong-willed and sensitive. He is affectionate with his mother, yet culturally he seems French, never speaking German or even the compromise language of English. He’s hungry for the truth about his parents: as mentioned above, he insists on sitting in on the trial and nearly kills his dog experimenting with a toxic product to see if his father might have been drugged before he fell. If he wants to know the truth, there are also hints that he may be lying to save his mother.
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Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’Une Chute) is a courtroom drama about a German writer accused of killing her French husband. It’s an engrossing entertainment but has also been analyzed on deeper levels, especially from a feminist perspective. After all, Triet has shown her interest in the power politics of gender relations since her first, acclaimed feature, La Bataille de Solferino (Age of Panic), and belongs to Collectif 50/50, a group dedicated to gender equality in the film and audiovisual sectors. As an American who has lived in France for more than a quarter-century, my own perspective on the film is that of the expatriate. Often, the “expat” is considered somewhat privileged, and this may be accurate when compared with other Others, but the light cast by Triet’s film illuminates conditions similar to those faced by “normal” immigrants, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, exiles, and undocumented immigrants, though with yawning differences of degree.
Sandra Voyter (Sandra Müller) and her partner, Samuel Meleski (Samuel Theis), are both writers living an idyllic life in the mountains near Grenoble with their young son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Sandra is successful enough to be interviewed by a journalist, but her husband is much less so and has a hard time finding the time and energy to write after he’s done with his teaching duties. We learn that the son had his sight impaired by an injury that took place as a result of the father’s negligent parenting. Treatments were expensive (especially when the family was living in London), and we also learn that they are living in what seems like a luxury chalet only because it’s a family residence, and because they can more easily afford life in a rural village. Samuel felt comfortable in the village he’d known since childhood, while Sandra felt isolated. The situation (frustrated writer/father/husband, victimized but gifted son) is eerily like that of The Shining, except that Sandra isn’t as passive as Shelley Duvall’s Mrs. Torrance. As in Kubrick’s horror film, the father winds up dead, but while Jack Torrance freezes to death while trying to kill his family, Samuel falls out of a window of the chalet . . . or was pushed. In both French and English, chute/fall can take on different shades of meaning, as in novels by Albert Camus (The Fall) and William Golding (Free Fall).
The first striking aspect of the film is the depiction of the maze that any legal or administrative procedure becomes for the foreigner. The daunting language difficulties – expressing oneself crudely in the other tongue, understanding with difficulty what is being said – in addition to the technical differences, would turn procedure in any country labyrinthine, but France is particularly bureaucratic with its forest of acronyms and forms. A murder trial is exceptional, as grave as it gets, but there are many procedures one might face: civil trials, citizenship procedures, applications for government aid, registration in educational establishments, driver’s license applications, tax audits, marriage, divorce, even death (although then someone else must deal with the onerous formalities).
Sandra is ordered to speak in French when she’s on the stand, but sometimes she falters and must speak in English to express the “whole truth” about certain points. In the French trial system great latitude is given to lawyers and judges in the supposed pursuit of truth and justice. A lawyer may turn from a witness to Sandra, who isn’t even on the stand, to examine her. The lawyers’ skill in taking advantage of that wide latitude lends a theatrical air to the proceedings, so that one judges the “performances” of the lawyers as much as the defendant. Or the plaintiff: During a civil trial against an employer, I realized while watching the lawyers go at it that they were the main attraction – I felt like a mere pretext. What makes Sandra’s predicament even more acute is that her young son insists on attending the court sessions, spectating at his mother’s ordeal, even listening to audio of his parents having a drag-out-knock-down argument.
The second aspect of Anatomy that cuts to the core of the expatriate (or other foreigner) experience has to do with language. This was described above in the specific context of legal and administrative procedure. One more thing which pertains to Sandra’s legal situation: She’s allowed to stay at home during her trial and keep her son with her; however, a court-ordered guardian is present with them at all times. The guardian must see to it that Sandra doesn’t manipulate Daniel, especially his possible testimony. One cardinal rule: She must only speak to him in French. (This reminded me of a traffic stop I once experienced in an immigrant quarter in Paris during a terrorism scare, when riot police were arbitrarily pulling over “suspect” vehicles. During the incident, the police ordered everyone in our car to only speak French.)
Language is also a general phenomenon. It is strange that Sandra never utters a word of German during the film. Her adopted main language is English. She says that she and her partner decided on English as a compromise language, a kind of neutral sanctuary, when they were living in London. This may have been so in the sense that Samuel’s native tongue was French, while Sandra’s was German. But it was hardly a neutral linguistic refuge or sanctuary: English was the language of the place where they were living. Yet they continued speaking English at home when they came to France to live.
It often happens that mixed couples in France use English as their home language. In some cases, one partner may be a native English-speaker while the other speaks English as a second language but better than French. Or both partners/spouses may speak English as a second language but better than French – they also often socialize with an international set where English is prevalent. In these cases, we may speak genuinely of English as a linguistic refuge. But in the case where one partner/spouse is French, the power dynamics undergo a subtle (or not-so-subtle) shift. One might think that in such a case the French-speaking partner/spouse may feel irked to speak English in his or her native land (especially given historic rivalry and friction between Britain and France). But often this is not the case. Many French partners in this situation that I have known actually felt liberated from native strictures by speaking English, and identified culturally with “Anglophonia,” often (but not exclusively) after living, working, or studying abroad.
The “foreign” partner with an inadequate or nonexistent level of French finds herself (it’s often a woman) at a disadvantage, even if the couple speaks English at home. If the couple socializes with French friends and family, then it is the Francophone partner who acts as social interface, interpreter, and explainer-in-chief. He also leads the way in official, commercial, and financial interactions outside the home. In a “normal” situation, the dependent Anglophone partner gradually learns French and becomes more autonomous. But in more exploitative situations, the Francophone partner may discourage this autonomy. A Paris-based American psychotherapist, Jill Bourdais, who has treated abused foreign women, explained to me that a weaponized language advantage was a way for abusive partners to keep women isolated.
In Anatomy, the French spouse of Sandra seems comfortable speaking English at home. As a successful writer, Sandra is in a privileged position, and yet she still feels socially isolated, though this is presented as more geographical than cultural. She speaks to her son in English, never in her own language. In addition, he always answers her in French, not English, let alone German. Over the years living the expat life in Paris, I’ve observed many linguistic permutations in mixed families. I speak to my children (now grown) in English, and they’ve always answered me in English. But in some other families, children answer their Anglophone parent in French even when the parent speaks to them in English (often such children still become nearly bilingual and function well if they visit English-speaking family). And yet I’ve never encountered a person who never, ever speaks her own language, especially with her child. It’s not clear if the director intended this linguistic quirk to contribute to (if not cause) the tension between the spouses or the son’s dysfunction, but this seems perfectly plausible if we transpose the situation to the real world.
The third element the film turns on is the variance between the spouses in terms of professional and financial success. Both are writers, but Samuel feels stuck in a poverty (or at least frustration) loop, unable to pursue his writing, while Sandra has had a modicum of success. What’s more aggravating to her partner is that she’s used an idea derived from his manuscript (apparently abandoned) in a work of hers that was successfully published. This has been interpreted in gender/feminist terms: the inability of the male to accept an inferior financial position. It could also be seen as an interesting take on how sticky imaginative and professional realities impact the relationships of artistic couples.
Often when an expatriate is in a relationship with a French person it is unequal – but it doesn’t depend so much on gender as nationality. The French partner is in a privileged or at least “normal” position. They have the university degrees that are recognized, the contacts, the familiar job resumé/CV. The couple in the film are outliers in this regard. Perhaps it’s precisely this that Samuel cannot bear, and in a perverse though furtive way what Sandra cannot, either. In terms of sheer plausibility, we can believe that writing, the profession of Sandra and Samuel, makes it possible for the female – and foreign – spouse to achieve more than her partner. The film does beg several questions, however: Does Sandra write in her own language, German? Is she really adept enough to write professionally in English (if that’s the case)? Were her works translated? Language aside, she does seem to be the more disciplined and focused member of the couple.
As the film progresses, despite our interest in the flashbacks that show us the interactions of Sandra and Samuel, despite our concern for Sandra’s fate, and despite even the possibility of a relationship blossoming between her and her lawyer, we are mostly drawn to the character of the son. Daniel is presented as a talented pianist, with an intellect of one well beyond his years. He is both strong-willed and sensitive. He is affectionate with his mother, yet culturally he seems French, never speaking German or even the compromise language of English. He’s hungry for the truth about his parents: as mentioned above, he insists on sitting in on the trial and nearly kills his dog experimenting with a toxic product to see if his father might have been drugged before he fell. If he wants to know the truth, there are also hints that he may be lying to save his mother.
The boy’s testimony rests on what he saw the day his father fell from a second-story window – though ironically his vision was impaired because of his father’s previous actions, or rather lack of action. His parents were writers, their work based on visual and mental perception. He’s a musician, his artistry based on hearing, and so he wants to hear the truth – his truth – in the courtroom, whether via live testimony or an audio recording. In a sense he has reacted against both parents, but he no longer has both parents, only one. What always impressed me about my own children when they were very young was their instinct for adaptation. Even at an early age they could switch from English to French with quicksilver ease in the space of a second or two. And when they changed their environment from Anglophone to French, or traveled from one country to another, they pivoted their very characters, as if shifting synaptic pathways. The son of Sandra and Samuel makes an even more radical shift – on a moral level.
Anatomy of a Fall: The title not only has several levels of meaning but more than one referent. There’s the physical fall of Samuel from that second-story window. There’s the fall, or collapse, of the family. There’s Sandra’s fall from grace, from respected writer, wife, and mother to accused murderer. But there’s yet another fall, the most searing of all: the child’s fall from innocence. Justine Triet anatomizes these falls trenchantly, and I felt it clarified aspects of my own life as a foreigner with some profundity. But although her effort at a satisfying resolution “works,” when I anatomized my own reactions in retrospect, I couldn’t help feeling that the death of innocence can be assuaged but not cured.
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Unless otherwise noted, all images are screenshots from the film.
