Justine Triet, who is best-known for Oscar and Palme d’Or-winning courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall,” says she could have become a lawyer, if she had not veered into filmmaking to dissect reality using a somewhat forensic approach.
In a wide-ranging conversation held Saturday by Triet at the Marrakech Film Festival with “Anatomy of a Fall” producer and close friend Marie-Ange Luciani, the revered French auteur noted that she comes from the documentaries milieu and uses fiction to “reach a catharsis about something I want to confront.”
With “Anatomy” – which at its core is about a warring husband and wife – the film’s inception had to do with the complexities of female empowerment, even though, “It would be horrible to start writing a film by saying I want to make a film about Metoo,” she pointed out. “But of course that’s something that was around me,” she added.
The forensic aspect is that, for Triet, “filmmaking always starts with sound.” Both in writing and in directing actors. And Triet’s rapport with sound extends beyond the movie set. “My producer was annoyed by the fact that I would record our conversations,” she revealed.
Back to the core of “Anatomy,” Triet says it’s not that much of a departure from her other films such as 2019 Cannes Competition entry “Sibyl,” that blurred fiction and reality mixing psychoanalysis, moviemaking, and eroticism. The key difference is that “Anatomy” revolves around the question of whether the film’s protagonist, Sandra, killed her husband Samuel, she said. “But at the same time what’s more important is what lies underneath. What’s wonderful about filmmaking is that you can organize the chaos of life.”
