STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful
Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller), a successful German writer, lives in Grenoble, in the French Alps, with her half blind eleven year old son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), and successful husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), with whom she's having marital difficulties. When Samuel is found dead after a fall from the top of the house, Sandra finds herself hauled into court on suspicion of his murder. With Daniel as the only credible witness, he is kept apart from her, and plunged into a moral quandary over what he wants to tell the courts.
Foreign cinema gets disturbingly little exposure over here, but this lengthy, award winning effort from writer/director Justine Triet has arrived on a non-streaming platform service. And luckily, it's worth the cash. And the time, given its over two and a half hour length. With a cast likely to be unfamiliar to uncultured swine who aren't familiar with a broader range of cinematic staples (such as moi), there's no one whose star power overshadows the proceedings, and so the whole experience can be soaked up in just the right way.
Although it's a legal drama set in an unfamiliar climate, with a courtroom procedure that seems completely wild from the outside looking in (with cross examination seemingly mixed in with all kinds of other factors), there's still a searing sense of realism to it all, without the wild theatricality of your average cheesy Hollywood courtroom drama, real people with real emotions and real revelations pouring out in the courtroom. In the lead role, Huller lays everything on the line, unleashing the pent up frustrations of a wife who's kept everything in for years, but it's probably Machado-Graner who steals the show as the afflicted rich kid stuck in the middle in his own private hell.
It all builds up to a genuinely suspenseful climax, where nothing is certain, and the trial will leave a tonne of emotional turmoil one way or the other. It's refreshing to see something as pure and unvarnished as this, which builds up to an experience you'll remember. *****
Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller), a successful German writer, lives in Grenoble, in the French Alps, with her half blind eleven year old son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), and successful husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), with whom she's having marital difficulties. When Samuel is found dead after a fall from the top of the house, Sandra finds herself hauled into court on suspicion of his murder. With Daniel as the only credible witness, he is kept apart from her, and plunged into a moral quandary over what he wants to tell the courts.
Foreign cinema gets disturbingly little exposure over here, but this lengthy, award winning effort from writer/director Justine Triet has arrived on a non-streaming platform service. And luckily, it's worth the cash. And the time, given its over two and a half hour length. With a cast likely to be unfamiliar to uncultured swine who aren't familiar with a broader range of cinematic staples (such as moi), there's no one whose star power overshadows the proceedings, and so the whole experience can be soaked up in just the right way.
Although it's a legal drama set in an unfamiliar climate, with a courtroom procedure that seems completely wild from the outside looking in (with cross examination seemingly mixed in with all kinds of other factors), there's still a searing sense of realism to it all, without the wild theatricality of your average cheesy Hollywood courtroom drama, real people with real emotions and real revelations pouring out in the courtroom. In the lead role, Huller lays everything on the line, unleashing the pent up frustrations of a wife who's kept everything in for years, but it's probably Machado-Graner who steals the show as the afflicted rich kid stuck in the middle in his own private hell.
It all builds up to a genuinely suspenseful climax, where nothing is certain, and the trial will leave a tonne of emotional turmoil one way or the other. It's refreshing to see something as pure and unvarnished as this, which builds up to an experience you'll remember. *****