‘Anatomy Of A Fall’ Co-Writer Arthur Harari Says Star Sandra Hüller’s “Level Of Subtlety Is Very Rare” – Contenders Film: The Nominees

When real-life couple Justine Triet and Arthur Harari set out to write Anatomy of a Fall, about a woman on trial for the murder of her husband, they built the story on relationships first and foremost.

“The first embryo was the relationship between the son and the mother and the idea of the son discovering he doesn’t really know who his mother is,” Harari said during a panel Saturday at Deadline’s Contenders Film: The Nominees event. “And then the possibility of talking in a very deep and true way: What is a couple?”

In the Palme d’Or-winning film directed by Triet, Sandra Hüller stars as Sandra Voyter, a writer whose husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) has died after falling off the balcony of their home in the French Alps. As Sandra stands accused of pushing Samuel to his death, her partially sighted son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) is the only witness to whatever preceded the fall. As the action moves to the courtroom, and the fall is examined in forensic detail, the falling apart of Sandra and Samuel’s marriage is also exposed.

“One of the starting points for the whole film was writing for Sandra [Hüller],” Harari said. “Because we had her in mind, we knew that she was able to be so subtle in her acting. She’s the kind of actor where you don’t even see acting. You see her and you really believe what’s happening, and this level of subtlety is really rare. So we could be totally free in the ideas and the writing and the dialogue, especially, to push very far the idea of complexity and ambiguity.”

For producer Marie-Ange Luciani, the multiple languages — English, French and German — multiple settings and timelines and the blending of genres proved an exciting prospect.

“I love to do changeling projects,” she said, “but before that, there is Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, two people that I love very much. I love their work very much. It was a big adventure, but a big very important dialogue. I never had this kind of conversation. It was very strong, intense and passionate.”

Luciani added that Triet and Harari’s script was “very precise and very strong, and talking about a contemporary woman was so rare in French to speak about women like she does. She’s very specific and I think working with a couple was a big experience too, because they are so different, Arthur and Justine. Arthur’s movies are very different from Justine’s movies, but they are so complementary.”

Check back Tuesday for the panel video.