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It isn’t clear whether the fall was actually a byproduct of murder. What is is that it happened at an unhappy home. Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winning “Anatomy of a Fall” opens with the mysterious death of Samuel (Samuel Theis), a stifled artist living in a secluded, snow-choked cabin in Grenoble with his celebrated novelist wife, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), their young son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), and their white-blue-eyed border collie. Daniel and the pup return from a long walk one morning to find a dead Samuel bloodied and supine in front of the house, apparently having fallen from his attic workspace. Sandra hadn’t noticed because she was ostensibly wearing earplugs to drown out the loud music Samuel was playing on a loop — the Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band’s instrumental cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” — while attempting to nap.

Sandra maintains her innocence. The law trusts the “the wife did it” cliché over her word. Enough details surrounding Samuel’s death are suspicious. Supposing this was, in fact, a suicide: why would he kill himself by jumping from the second story of a relatively squat house? How could Sandra possibly sleep while music — whose headache-inducing volume is recreated by investigators to get their reporting right — blasted like that? There are also the revelations that Samuel and Sandra had had a fight the night before, and that, the day of, Sandra had had to cut an interview with a student writing a thesis on her books short because of Samuel’s intrusive stereo. Frustrating, no doubt. Also, maybe, a breaking point for Sandra, who’d been excited for the interview because it meant a brief lapse in the loneliness she’d been feeling ever since Samuel had made her and Daniel move to this chalet where nothing and no one are around.

Read the full review on 425.