Anatomy of a Fall (2023 | France | 151 minutes | Justine Tiret)

I don’t know how many times we as a society can retell The Staircase Myth, but as long as each iteration of the now-familiar story of a spouse accused of causing a mysterious fall-related death of a domestic partner is told in as scintillating and evocative a fashion as Justine Tiret’s, I’ll gladly keep watching for hours on end. I saw a lot of great movies at this year’s festival, but none were as riveting and emotionally ravaging as this year’s Palme d’Or winner. In this version, two writers and their visually impaired son are living high in the French alps, renovating a multi-story chateau. A wife’s interview with a student from nearby Grenoble is interrupted by her husband’s incredibly annoying music on repeat. (The Macao Rhythm & Steel Band’s cover of P.I.M.P. alone is grounds for divorce.) A few hours later, the son and his fantastic border collie return from playing fetch in the snow to find the father sprawled on the ground, dead from a head wound spilling blood onto the icy driveway.

What actually transpired in the intervening hours soon becomes a matter for the French justice system. Like last year’s tremendous Saint Omer, the proceedings are very different from what Americans have come to expect from Law & Order. Rather than a procedurally straightforward examination of facts, the courtroom instead becomes a multi-faceted interrogation into the soul of a troubled marriage. The case unfolds with surprising testimony, speculative questioning from the prosecution, and philosophical interruptions from the judge, all in surprisingly frequent conversation with the accused. As the accused wife, Sandra Hüller — so chilling in the Zone of Interest — gets to showcase an entirely different emotional range here. She’s playing a German writer, more commercially successful than her French husband. The trial proceeds in a mix of French and English, with home life continuing tenuously — the court has appointed a supervisor for her son and defense counsel is an old friend with old feelings.

Each new piece of evidence or information muddies certainties and reveals insights into the deeply complex nature of a relationship stretched thin by obligations, regrets, ambitions, and betrayals. A cool intellectual exterior is peeled away layer by layer to revealing a white hot core in a breathtaking central piece of testimony involving audio replays and speculative flashbacks. Hüller is absolutely electric, young actor Milo Machado-Graner (as her son) will pierce your heart, and Messi (as Snoop) is a very good dog who’s performance is so pivotal to the drama that he merits top billing. The film was the hottest topic of conversation throughout the weekend, dividing audiences in terms of guilt, innocence, and what might have really happened.

It’s my clear favorite for best of the fest, if not the year so far.

Poor Things (2023 | USA, Ireland, UK | 141 minutes | Yorgos Lanthimos)

In this relentlessly inventive take on the Frankenstein myth, an experimentation’s sexually-insatiable experiment stumbles out from a Goldbergian laboratory into a vibrant Ozlike world. Here, the good doctor is Willem Dafoe (Godwin “God” Baxter), a prominent London surgeon who bears the deep scars and unlikely digestive system of being the prime subject of his own father’s cruel and bizarre scientific investigations. In a twisted act of mercy, Emma Stone is his creation (“Bella”): a young woman whose chronological and biological ages are far out of sync. When we first meet her, she has no language and poor motor skills, yet is driven by a chaotically violent curiosity about her surroundings. Although she’s given free reign of a grand manor, well appointed with comforts, curiosities, and an amusing menagerie of chimeric creatures, soon her is not enough to satisfy her boundless interests in what lies beyond.

Enter a hilarious louche of a lawyer played with perfect pitch by Mark Ruffalo. He’s so fascinated by a bit of contract law that he breaks Bella out of her gothic monochrome home and into the soaring vibrant colors of the richly-imagined world beyond its walls. Lanthimos’s Lisbon sparkles with the delights of custard pastries and countless hours spent in the throes of passion (“furious jumping” in Bella-ese). As their sensual vacation proceeds around the continent, Bella’s development and understanding of the world soon outpaces her debaucherous companion. Ruffalo plays his frustration to and jealousy to hilariously childlike effect, with his tantrums and overreactions spinning the story further on its axis to bawdily unconventional liberation abroad.

The wide-angle camerawork and mannered dialogue are everything we’ve come to expect from the ongoing creative partnership of Lanthimos, screenwriter Tony McNamara, and producer/star/muse Emma Stone. But for all of its absurdities, this may be Lanthimos’s warmest-hearted and most accessible film. It’s a triumph for Lanthimos: Emma Stone’s portrayal of the discovery of the pleasures and pains of humanity is utterly rapturous.

El Conde (2023 | Chile | 110 minutes | Pablo Larraín)

Pablo Larraín approaches the long complex aftermath of Augusto Pinochet’s reign in an audacious allegory of autocratic fascism as an ancient eternal vampiric force. Arriving on the fiftieth anniversary of the coup d’état that ousted democratic socialist Salvador Allende from the presidency of Chile, this dark farce envisions the aftermath of the murderous dictator’s escape from any real consequences for his generational crimes. Here, he imagines “the Count” (Jaime Vadell) as a centuries-old blood sucker living out his days on a Patagonian ranch who finds himself thirsting for the eternal sleep of death.

His complicit wife and greedily aggrieved adult children soon turn up (all remain “unbitten” mortals), desperate for their long-awaited inheritance of covert stolen assets that have padded their father’s coffers. As they squabble over their family’s future, a deeply faithful (and radiantly beautiful) Catholic nun with a prodigious penchant for sums arrives to assist. She brings the secret blessing of the church along with tools of flattery and forensic accounting to discover the whereabouts of a hidden fortune. Moreover, she’s brought a suitcase stocked with the implements of exorcism to suit her true purpose. Through alluring conversations, she flatters her subject into revealing a litany of corruption and a web of paperwork concealing ill-gotten gains.

With stunningly beautiful, inky black & white cinematography from Ed Lachman (working with old lenses and new cameras), it’s a head trip. Still-pulsating hearts are blended into smoothies, elderly dictators take flight to hunt in the big city, and a the identity of an arch narrator brings down the house in the third act. A sense of moral and physical decay hangs over the proceedings, which makes the degree of persistent greed and pervasive self-interest among the players all the more darkly humorous.

Larraín uses the conceit to reckon with the past, layering of the indelible images of informed fantasy to make it more palatable to revisit cruel realities that tore a country to pieces. Most importantly, the film poses humor as a critical step toward healing a still raw wound while also serving as an urgent warning to present-day audiences against the very real dangers of complacency.

The sharpest satire always cuts the closest to the truth. It’s an incredibly relevant and personal story for the director and his ability to translate this story to a wider audience is a tremendous accomplishment. I can only hope the upcoming Netflix release comes with historical annotations.