“It will be a very long film that will not have any success at the box office.”
That was the prognosis that Justine Triet repeated over and over again to her producers while she was shooting her latest film a couple of winters ago.
In the project in question, the characters would not stop getting into violent dialectical fights, the underlying theme would be the utopia of full equality in the heterosexual couple and the music was going to be conspicuous by its absence, except for a crushing instrumental
remix
of a old 50 Cent song.
Anatomy of a Fall
, which could be understood as the simple story of a woman accused of killing her husband, had everything to obey Triet's prediction.
Until, against all odds, it became the miracle of the year.
The film aspires to five statuettes at this Sunday's Oscar ceremony, including best film and direction, alongside Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan, and arrives as a favorite in the best screenplay category, signed by Triet and his partner , Arthur Harari, and in which it is difficult not to see reflections of autofiction.
Acquired by 155 countries, including Iraq, Vietnam and China, where it will be released at the end of March, the film has won over 1.6 million viewers in France and the same number in the international market.
In the US it has raised four million dollars, while in Spain it has exceeded 200,000 viewers, a European record that is only surpassed by Germany - where the protagonist, actress Sandra Hüller, comes from - with almost 300,000 accumulated.
Actress Olivia Wilde poses with the dog Messi, last February in Los Angeles. Amanda Edwards (Getty Images)
In addition to the initial push for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and its undeniable qualities, one of the architects of its success has been the American distributor's campaign, Neon, worthy of the best times of Miramax in the nineties.
Her poster underlined the film's connection to the judicial
thriller
, a somewhat higher-grossing genre than the marital drama, with this phrase: “Did this woman kill her husband?”
Readings of the script were organized with famous actors, such as Riley Keough or Bob Odenkirk, after which the public had to vote whether the protagonist was innocent or guilty.
Neon, which previously distributed the Oscar-winning
Parasites
, made Messi, the
border collie
who plays Snoop — “the only one who knows the truth,” according to Triet — into a central element of this campaign: there has been no star in recent weeks, from Bradley Cooper to Emma Stone, who has not been photographed with the dog.
Meanwhile, the digital strategy involved viralizing the videos of actor Swann Arlaud, the “hot lawyer” of the film, as Triet called him, perhaps not by chance, when collecting one of his two Golden Globes.
If we add its six Césars and six other European Film Awards, a Bafta for best screenplay, an Independent Spirit for best foreign film and dozens of distinctions from American critics,
Anatomy of a Fall
has 79 awards out of a total of 191 nominations , still far from the French record of
The Artist
, with 162 victories out of 204 nominations, but already converted into one of the phenomena of the season.
The icing on the cake: Barack Obama, cultural prescriber in his free time, chose it as one of his favorite films of 2023.
It is not a unique case:
The zone of interest
, spoken in German and also starring Hüller, has five nominations in this edition of the Oscars, while
All Quiet on the Front
achieved nine in 2023. But there are differences: the first was a production by the A24 mini-studio, it is directed by a prestigious director like Jonathan Glazer and has the Holocaust as a backdrop, while the second was released on Netflix, where it remained for more than four months in the carousel of the 10 most viewed films .
Anatomy of a Fall
, on the other hand, arises from a different economy, that of French auteur cinema, and does not have a filmmaker, a plot or a star that,
a priori
, would guarantee this almost unprecedented success.
In February, attendees at a dramatized reading of the script for 'Anatomy of a Fall' at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles were invited to weigh in on the protagonist's guilt or innocence at the end.
The event, which Triet attended, was part of the film's Oscar promotion campaign. Amanda Edwards (Getty Images)
All in all, it has not been an easy road.
No one expected anything special from the film when it premiered at Cannes last May.
Above all, after the uneven reception of Triet's previous project,
Sybil's Reflection
, one of those portraits of women facing the harmful dynamics of modern life that abound in her filmography.
But
Anatomy of a Fall
received unanimous applause.
Days later, this former Fine Arts student, who lived with the minimum insertion income until she was 30, became the third woman to win the Palme d'Or in the history of the contest.
In her speech, Triet took the opportunity to attack “the commodification of culture by the neoliberal government” of Emmanuel Macron, whom she accused of endangering “the French cultural exception.”
Former Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne refused to go see the film in protest (only after being dismissed was she seen leaving a session in Paris), while social networks treated her as ungrateful and urged her to return the subsidies received.
In September, the French National Film Center ruled it out as the country's representative for the Oscars, due to general incomprehension (there was even talk of political
vendetta
), which explains why
Anatomy of a Fall
aspires to the Oscar in several categories, but not in that of the best international film.
France preferred to send
Slow Fire
, a culinary drama with Juliette Binoche with more conservative contours, which did not pass the second Oscar screening.
Triet lost the vote by a single vote, despite the support of three of the seven members of the selection committee, which included figures such as director Olivier Assayas and producer Charles Gillibert.
They both voted for
Anatomy of a Fall
.
Director Justine Triet, after receiving the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, in May 2023.Lionel Hahn (Getty Images)
The film is a welcome joy for French cinema, immersed these days in its own MeToo, following accusations of sexual violence against the great figures of the post-Nouvelle Vague generation, such as Benoît Jacquot, Jacques Doillon, André Téchiné, Philippe Garrel or Gérard Depardieu.
The arrival of names like Triet confirms a somewhat late generational change, which is attested to by the awards received by this new French cinema at international festivals since the pandemic, as demonstrated by the emergence of female directors around the age of 40, such as Julia Ducournaeau, Mati Diop and Audrey Diwan, winners in Cannes, Berlin and Venice, to which we can add other names with international experience, such as Céline Sciamma and Mia Hansen-Løve.
What will be next for Triet, recently signed by the CAA agency, which has Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Beyoncé among its clients?
“I've seen directors who are very successful and then go on to do really shit.
You have to be careful,” she told us in November, when she said she had “one very expensive project and another very cheap” in her portfolio.
After hinting that she would like to work with Jennifer Lawrence, Triet would have received the proposal to adapt
Monica
, the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, with Cate Blanchett.
The interested party has not confirmed it.
“I want to sit in an empty room, without noise, without children and without my family and have time to start a new project,” she simply told
Deadline
in February .
“When March passes, I'll get on with it.”
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