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Justine Triet (France, 1978) debuted, after many documentaries, with
the domestic drama
La Bataille de Solferino/ Age of Panic (2013), which is half a documentary, largely a conversation piece, with
the actors playing characters named after themselves.
There is chaos in Laetitia's home. She and her partner Virgil are struggling to control Laetitia's screaming little daughters
Jeane and Liv.
She is getting frantically dressed for an appointment.
Meanwhile, her ex Vincent is buying flowers and gifts.
A male babysitter arrives, Marc.
Vincent phones Laetitia that he is downstairs and has come to see the girls.
Laetitia has no intention of letting him in and asks a neighbor, Vatsana, for help. She tells Marc to not let anyone in.
Vincent, in turn, calls Arthur for help.
Laetitia and Virgil leave the home.
Laetitia is taken to an important political event.
She is a TV journalist covering the presidential elections.
At home Marc is juggling two difficult children and being bombarded by calls from Vincent who is visible in the street.
Marc eventually opens the door to Vincent but also calls Vatsana who
physically pushes Vincent out of the building.
Vincent visits his friend Arthur, who is his informal legal advisor.
Arthur reminds him that there is a specific day when he can visit the children, not at his own discretion.
A worried Laetitia, who is busy broadcasting from the crowded streets, asks Marc to take the girls to a cafe' named Le Solferino.
Marc leaves the house with the two little girls and phones his friend Emilie for help.
Vincent tracks down Marc. Marc and Emilie try to calm down Vincent, and protect the children from him, and repeatedly text Laetitia for instructions, but Laetitia is trapped into the big crowd and has a job to do.
An ever more upset
Vincent finds Laetitia in the crowd and complains that she is endangering the
children by having Marc take them to a crowded event. Laetitia has to broadcast and can't deal with him. Finally the event ends and Laetitia arrives just in time to prevent Vincent from taking one of the kids. Vincent gets arrested.
We learn that he was interned in a psych ward for violent behavior.
Laetitia goes back to cover the presidential elections.
Now fans of the winner are dancing in the streets.
Vincent is released by the police since noone has pressed charges.
He keeps claiming that the judge allowed him to sese the children
and keeps showing the judge's letter.
Laetitia returns home exhausted late at night and pays Marc.
Vincent asks Arthur to accompany him to see the children.
Vincent introduces Arthur as his lawyer to Laetitia.
Arthur tries to mediate between Vincent and Laetitia,
but they yell at each other nonstop.
He demands the right to see the children but
she is afraid that he will kidnap the children.
It is very late now.
When they finally calm down, Arthus confesses that he's not a lawyer, just a student of law. Virgil arrives and tries to be friendly to Vincent.
Latitia leaves the three men and takes a walk outside alone.
They bond and, when Laetitia returns, finally Vincent leaves peacefully with Arthur.
Virgil cheers up Laetitia and they make love.
Meanwhile, Vincent and Arthur have a late dinner at a restaurant.
Victoria/ In Bed with Victoria (2016) about
a divorced hyper-active lawyer with two daughters who overdoses.
The psychological thriller
Sibyl (2019)
is about
an alcoholic novelist and psychoanalyst with two daughters
and about a love triangle between
her patient who is a young pregnant actress thinking of getting an abortion,
the actor who got her pregnant and his wife who is the film s director.
The 2.5-hour Anatomie d'une Chute/ Anatomy of a Fall (2023),
co-written with Arthur Harari,
is half a
courtroom drama and half a kammerspiel.
Again, the protagonist is a middle-aged mother who is an confident independent professional (a novelist after the journalist, the lawyer and the psychoanalyst) and sexually active.
The investigation indulges in computer-based visual and aural technologies.
However, we realize how little technology improves over the old-school investigations based only on intuition, witnesses and physical clues.
The audio recordings fail to establish a definitive truth but succeed in making us see what we have already seen in a different light.
The child sits in the courtroom and listens to all the evidence just like the jurors. The bickering of his parents, the frustration of his father, the emotions of his mother are all new to him just like to the jurors.
Ultimately the child creates the "truth" that the jury accepts. He is the real deus-ex-machina. He is the real jury, and once he decides who is innocent he can easily convince the court of it.
On the other hand, most viewers probably prefer to think that his mother got away with murder. At one point we see a literary critic on television point out that "the story of a writer who murdered her husband is a lot more interesting than a teacher who committed suicide"; which is an interesting analysis of which "truth" is more likely to be created in the collective imagination.
German writer Sandra lives in an isolated mountain cottage with her French husband Samuel and their son Daniel. A French journalist, Zoe, is trying to interview her, but her husband is playing loud music while working in the attic. Sandra is more interested in Zoe's life than in discussing her own work, but in any case the interview has to be stopped because of the noise.
Daniel, a visually impaired child, is playing with his dog in the snow when
he suddenly finds his father Samuel dead in the snow. He has signs of a heavy
blow on the head.
The investigating police is faced with two possibilities: that he jumped from
the attic of his own will or that someone killed him. All the evidence points
towards foul play and Sandra becomes the suspect because she was the only one
in the house.
Sandra hires an old friend as her defense lawyer, Vincent, and tell him that most likely Samuel kills himself: he had tried before. Daniel's testimony is that
his parents were not arguing after Zoe left, but a reenactment of the fall
proves that he cannot possibly have heard their voices from outside. The child then changes his testimony claiming that he was inside the house, but now he is no longer credible. On the other hand, an audio recording surfaces that documents a violent argument between Sandra and Samuel just the day before. Sandra is
formally indicted of the murder and the court assigns an officer, Marge, to
live with her and make sure Daniel is not influenced to testify one way or another. Sandra tells Vincent about her marital problems. Samuel was responsible of the accident that causes Daniel to partially lose his sight. Samuel felt guilty.
They had financial problems.
When the trial finally takes place, Zoe plays the recording of her attempted
interview with Sandra. The prosecutor reveals that Sandra is bisexual and Zoe
admits that it sounds like Sandra was flirting with her. The prosecutor implies
that Samuel might have played loud music out of jealousy.
The experts testify that the only rational explanation is that someone hit
Samuel in the attic and then pushed the body down. Sandra testified that Samuel,
who was treated for depression after the accident, tried to kill himself six months earlier with some pills. A psychologist testifies that Samuel was
depressed but places all the blame on Sandra: Sandra was making Samuel feel
guilty, Sandra is responsible for Samuel's writing block. Sandra in fact
stole an idea from Samuel's unfinished novel and turned it into her own bestselling novel. Samuel was a failure because of her manipulative behavior.
The court then hears the audio recording of the argument between Sandra and Samuel. This is a lengthy dialogue in which they accuse each other. Samuel accuses
Sandra of stealing his idea and of cheating on him. Sandra admits having sex with a woman and several other flings.
We learn that Sandra's bestsellers are all autobiographical: her
father s death, her mother s illness, and the accident that almost killed Daniel.
Daniel is in the audience and hears all the sordid details about his parents.
Vincent reveals that Samuel was routinely recording the conversations with
Sandra, transcribing them and sending them to his publisher in lieu of real
chapters of a novel. Vincent paints a picture of Samuel as a man devastated
by the accident, who decided to move back to his hometown, bought a chalet
and started renovating it, ran out of money and couldn't write; i.e. the
portrait of a likely suicide.
Then a surprise: Daniel intends to testify some new details. His testimony
definitely proves that his mother was not lying about Samuel being suicidal.
That's enough to get Sandra acquitted. She returns home and faces Daniel.
They don't look happy. We are left with the douth.
(Copyright © 2022 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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