The Academy Award-nominated, Palme d'Or-winning film Anatomy of a Fall is coming to Hulu on March 22, 2024 in the US (and will likely arrive on Disney Plus worldwide around the same time), and it's an absolute must-see.
The film starts with a tragedy: a man, Samuel Maleski, falls to his death from an isolated chalet high in the mountains, while his wife Sandra is inside and his son Daniel, who is visually impaired, is out walking the dog. His wife says it was a terrible accident, but the authorities don't believe her – and when Daniel's story appears to change and forensic evidence indicates that Samuel suffered a head wound before he hit the ground, Sandra becomes the prime suspect.
On the face of it, Anatomy of a Fall is a courtroom drama focusing on Sandra's attempts to protest her innocence, played in an Oscar-nominated performance by Sandra Hüller. But it's much more than that.
Is Anatomy of a Fall worth streaming?
Yes. The Guardian called it "electric", "gripping" and "tantalising", its screenplay delivering something much more taut and involving than you'd expect from the genre: "the courtroom drama here is electric, restlessly dynamic and compulsively watchable." And the film has a bigger story to tell: "it’s more than just a woman on trial here... [director Justine] Triet seeds the film with questions about divisions of labour, about the role of the wife within marriage and about society’s profound discomfort around a woman who not only takes what she wants from life, but refuses to apologise for it."
Over at RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico gives it three and a half stars out of five. While Sandra Hüller's performance is "stunning... possibly the best of the year" the film "sometimes feels too chilly and self-indulgent". However, "it builds to a series of scenes that hit like a punch."
The New Yorker called it a "magnificently slippery thriller" where the truth seems elusive: "This is less of a courtroom drama, I reckon, and more of a discordant, highly strung character clash with legal bells and whistles tacked on." And The Hollywood Reporter was effusive: "An intricately layered, surgically controlled drama that operates as both a courtroom thriller and an investigation of the mysterious recesses of domestic life, the film is as chilly as its French Alpine setting yet never distancing."
It's one of TechRadar Managing Editor Matt Bolton's favorite films of the year, who claims, "It's not enough that only Sandra Hüller was nominated for acting; both Milo Machado-Graner [Sandra's son, Daniel] and Messi (the dog) should have been up for Best Supporting Actor. Watch it and you'll see I'm right!"
Whether it picks up a win from any of its five Oscar nominations or not, it's a shoo-in for our best Hulu movies guide. Catch it yourself in late March.
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