Sibyl

 

Director Justine Triet

Triet with actress Virginie Efira

Efira and Triet with actress Adèle Exarchopoulos

SIBYL            B                                                                                                                           France  Belgium  (100 mi)  2019 ‘Scope  d: Justine Triet

The subjectivity of her words must seem objective to you.                                                       —Igor Maleski (Gaspard Uliel)

Justine Triet is a graduate of École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, a classical and historical School of Fine Arts that mostly graduates painters, sculptors, and architects, where she discovered video editing, having made documentaries before turning to fiction, exploring the gray areas and vagueness in our lives, using subtlety, dry wit, and sensuality. Describing her movies as “self-portraits,” according to Triet in an interview with Le Monde, “I have a crazy fear of things disappearing.  I make films to freeze a moment in the present.  Films, for me, have the possibility of organizing the chaos of our existence a little.”  Accordingly, this is a fractured puzzle piece, a carefully choreographed musical chairs of rotating pieces, where Sibyl (Virginie Efira, described as “The best Belgian actress you probably don’t know” by the Flemish newspaper De Standaard) is at the center, a one-time novelist who has turned into an apparently successful Parisian psychoanalyst, but is having second thoughts, lacking any real connection to any of her patients, still devastated by the messy break-up of an earlier relationship years ago with Gabriel (Niels Schneider), ultimately leading to the birth of her first child, also reeling from the alcohol-fueled suicide of her mother, with whom she had a distant relationship, now having the unpleasant task of informing her patients that she is leaving her practice to return to her initial passion and take up writing fiction again, which causes violent outbursts for some who are not too pleased at the news.  This state of imbalance sets the tone, as this is a subtle drama about the cruelties that people, consciously and unconsciously, inflict on themselves and others, through selfishness, manipulation, self-deceptions, and half-hearted decisions, where the film is a whirlwind, blackly comic drama growing ever more exaggerated by the second, with the supposedly even-keeled Sibyl slowly losing her sense of equilibrium, discovering writer’s block even before she writes a single word.  She’s a recovering alcoholic who lives with a graciously understanding boyfriend Étienne (Paul Hamy), two young children, and her brazenly calculating sister Édith (Laure Calamy) who endlessly complains about the difficulty of being single and her lousy career prospects, eliciting Sibyl’s sympathy, yet seems to delight in deceptively undermining her more successful sister, hilariously seen teaching Sibyl’s daughter how to trigger her mother’s feelings of guilt.  Sibyl’s own therapist, Dr. Katz (Arthur Harari, the director’s partner and cowriter), recalling the evils from the diabolical, sado-masochistic lesbian Dr. Katz from Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss) (1981), thinks she’s making a bad decision, for reasons we only discover later, continually avoiding the demons of the past, as this is a tragicomic farce that delves into the intricasies of impulsive tendencies and human manipulation, exposing sexual, drug-related, and emotional addictions.  Anything but straight forward, the film takes a circuitous route through intrusive flashbacks and oblique references told out of time, where there’s always a suspenseful level of uncertainty to what we’re witnessing, never quite sure what to make of it, but Efira offers a stellar, tour de force performance that never wavers, yet borders on the edge of hysteria.  Psychoanalysis and cinema come together, blurring fiction and reality, where this exhilarating yet often confusing drama escapes any classification.  A somewhat subversive take on the modern, bourgeois woman, the title is likely a reference to the best-selling 1973 book Sybil (Sybil Dorsett, a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason) that documents a patient’s multiple personality disorders, supposedly manifesting 16 different personalities, mirroring the Triet character’s erratic behavior and the changing nature of her identity, continually evolving into something new and different as the need presents itself, while Sibyl also references a prophetess in ancient Greek legend, speaking by divine inspiration on behalf of the gods, most commonly Apollo.  Neither one is ever mentioned in the film. 

Premiering at Cannes in the main competition, having already worked together with Efira in VICTORIA (2016), where she was nominated for a Best Actress César Award in France, Triet gets into the narrative mixer right from the outset, delivering a stunning amount of exposition in the first half hour through a dizzying series of edited vignettes that may leave viewers gasping for breath, wondering what in the hell is going on.  Just as Sibyl is ridding herself of her patients, she receives a desperate phone call from an up-and-coming actress on the verge of suicide, Margot, Adèle Exarchopoulos from Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adèle, Chapitres 1 et 2) (2013) and Michaël R. Roskam’s Racer and the Jailbird (Le Fidèle) (2017), who tearfully begs to see her.  Sibyl resists, but ultimately gives in shortly afterwards from the sheer persistence while scenes from David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014) appear on her television set, as Margot discovers that she has become pregnant by her onscreen partner Igor (Gaspard Uliel in his final film before his tragic ski accident death), who is himself in a relationship with the German film director Mika (Sandra Hüller).  Fascinated to the point of obsession, Sibyl becomes more and more involved in Margot’s tumultuous life, with all signs pointing to an abortion, as otherwise her pregnancy could sabotage her career, with Sibyl secretly recording the young woman’s therapy sessions which she then uses as inspiration for her novel, taking salacious material directly from her emotionally distraught circumstances, living vicariously through her, raising legitimate questions about where artists actually draw their inspiration from.  There may be traces back to Gena Rowlands suffering a midlife crisis in the Woody Allen film ANOTHER WOMAN (1988), as she’s also trying to write a book, drawing inspiration from overhearing the psychiatric sessions of a pregnant woman in a neighboring apartment, becoming a stand-in for her own repressed emotions, while Sibyl also relives her own repressed tragedies.  Apparently unconcerned about artistic plagiarism, or how her novel might undermine her existing relationship with Margot, Sibyl is always viewed as the sane authority figure in the room, yet this blurring of reality is only heightened by recurring flashbacks of her love affair with Gabriel, becoming the cause of her earlier alcoholism, plunging her back into the vortex of her past, leaving behind a terrible sense of emptiness and loss.  The onscreen intimacy of Efira and Schneider is only heightened by the fact they are a couple in real life, where a central fireside scene together is erotic and brilliantly choreographed, as clothes are removed in one long sequence leading into nakedness and sex, always feeling natural and organic.  Despite reducing her caseload, Sibyl still holds onto a young boy, Daniel (Adrien Bellemare), playing board games together as a way of extracting pertinent information, but he’s clever enough to make sure she abides by rules they devised, apparently taking extreme pleasure in preventing her from asking too much at one time, thereby shielding her efforts to help him process the trauma of his mother’s death, but they have a delicate balance in their relationship that may be the healthiest and most satisfactory in the entire film.  Sibyl plunges headlong into her relationship with Margot, offering vague encouragement every step of the way, as she apparently cannot work without consulting her, developing a dependent psychological crutch that quickly goes off the rails, losing any pretense of professionalism, joining the actress on the movie set on the island of Stromboli, just off the north coast of Sicily, containing Mount Stromboli, one of the four active volcanoes in Italy, recalling Ingrid Bergman’s existential crisis in Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950) that famously sparked a scandalous affair between the actress and her chosen director.  In an absurd development, Margot refuses to speak to the lead actor Igor, demanding that he speak through Sibyl when communicating, which over-emphasizes her role on the set, with everyone quickly turning to her whenever there’s a problem, expecting she’ll provide a calming fix to escalating tensions in the air.  

Once we get on the set of the film, the chaotic, behind-the-scenes atmosphere resembles Fassbinder’s BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE (1971), a satire on the film business itself with a doomed production unit where both the cast and crew are besieged by every possible thing that can go wrong, where nerves are continually on edge.  At the center of the controversy is the unraveling relationship between Margot and Igor, the stars of the film, which sends shockwaves through the rest of the crew, having a debilitating effect on the exquisitely high-strung director Mika, especially when Igor ignores Mika’s exasperated stage directions, constantly pleading for more emotions from her actors, even as they personally despise one another.  One by one they turn to Sibyl for some sense of balance and sanity, seeking in-the-moment professional help, yet Sibyl strangely ends up taking the place of the actors when they refuse to participate, actually walking off the set in disgust.  Inevitably, Sibyl’s best intentions are sabotaged by her own deluded obsessions and unfilled desires, as they are all dysfunctional without her, becoming too close to each one of them to render any objective impartiality, where she can’t help impulsively catering to the needs of others, so there are daily meltdowns of histrionic theatrics, with a kind of screwball comedy in the dizzying dialogue that grows ever more exaggerated at every turn, elevating the tragic dimensions of the idiosyncratic characters, evidently a staple in Triet’s films, where the inappropriate emotional eruptions match the sputtering volcano seen in the background.  The insanity is fun to watch, filming on a yacht out in the open sea, as Sibyl is helpless to stop the production tailspin, actually contributing to it, where Sandra Hüller’s comic talent is effectively utilized, continually asking for what the actors can’t give, literally driving them headfirst into a wall over and over again, creating indescribable tension, yet she’s unable to see the ridiculous aspect of her unhealthy and unrealistic expectations, as her self-righteous focus is more interested in maintaining her tyrannical control over the set, turning to Sibyl, of course, to back her up, yet the crew is having none of it, so in total desperation Mika simply jumps into the sea and swims to shore, leaving Sibyl in charge of directing the final scenes.  While it’s bravura filmmaking of comedic outlandishness, each of the characters contributes to the dysfunction, always turning to Sibyl as some kind of savior for a seemingly doomed film, where her calm demeanor becomes more and more frazzled, clearly out of her element, having no experience whatsoever in this kind of artistic endeavor, yet she meticulously documents it all in writing her new novel, actually reenacting scenes each night in her room, literally immersing herself in someone else’s life, violating all professional boundaries, where ethics and art are diametrically opposing forces that merge into personal ambition.  Sibyl’s publishers are overjoyed with their first glance at this new material, describing it as a war of the sexes on a backdrop of social revenge.  Sibyl recedes back into alcoholism from all the added pressures, where drunken scenes escalate into slapstick comedy, always uncomfortable territory unless handled deftly, and Triet seems content on pushing the uncomfortable limits of the audience, with Sibyl sliding ever further out of control, unleashing a flood of emotions, as her past and present repeatedly collide, creating a more volatile personality, making a mockery out of her life and profession, and her surprising career move to transition back into being an author.  She sacrifices her soul by stealing the life of one of her patients solely for personal gain, which has an increasingly pathetic look about it, especially when an out-of-control Margot destroys a hotel room in a fit of rage, but it’s wrapped in a bow of comic sketches brilliantly stitched together designed to titillate viewers with a grotesque yet carefully choreographed theater of the absurd that grows bleaker by the minute.  While it’s a curious venture, reprehensible characters with dubious motives fill the screen, as there’s nothing in this chaotic narrative that ever draws in an audience or ties any of this together, as if the director herself lost her way in this sea of possibilities, continually leaving viewers on the outside looking in.      

Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d'une chute)

 

Director Justine Triet

Triet accepting the Palme d'Or at Cannes

Triet with her cast at Cannes

Triet with actress Sandra Hüller

ANATOMY OF A FALL (Anatomie d'une chute)               B+                                                       France  (152 mi)  2023  d: Justine Triet

Sometimes a couple is kind of a chaos.           —Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller)

Courtroom dramas are their own entity, where it’s hard to sustain the tension throughout, though several films that come to mind are Carl Theodor Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), Sidney Lumet’s 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), Billy Wilder’s WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957), Otto Preminger’s ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959), which this title references, Robert Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d'Arc) (1961), Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and more recently Alice Diop’s Saint Omer (2022).  When a husband is found dead after a fall from a third story window, the French court charges the wife with murder, though the crime of passion is purely based on speculation, having no evidence actually tying her into a crime.  What’s perhaps most surprising about this film is it never answers the central question, where the entire film is something of a distracting Hitchcock MacGuffin, offering extraneous theories and clues that are besides the point, but there is a website set up at didshedoit.com (ANATOMY OF A FALL), which is uniquely shown onscreen before the story even begins asking viewers to vote on that very question.  Clearly no definitive answer is ever given.  Apparently actress Sandra Hüller, playing the wife, was unsure as well during the filming, according to a Q&A during the New York Film Festival, repeatedly asking the director if she was guilty, but no answer was forthcoming.  So instead of innocence or guilt, what dominates the film is the intelligence of the storytelling, subtly weaving together various strands of possibilities, becoming more of a character study revealing underlying motives, moving back in time for one powerful flashback sequence, with the camera strategically zooming in during key revelations, where the courtroom dissection of a marriage becomes a commentary on how news is disseminated through social media outlets, routinely delving into private lives, where lies become facts after repeated airings, with viewers unable to distinguish between the haze of prejudice and emotions that intentionally cloud our judgment, ultimately becoming an exposé on the fallibility of perception, where who and what’s to be believed remains an open question, even in a courtroom.  The French courtroom is nothing like what we see in America, where lawyers run the show with legal objections, as it’s more conversational, where the accused is allowed to speak directly to the judge, prosecutor, and stream of witnesses, feeling more like a democratic process.  The film won the coveted Palme d’Or 1st Place prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where Justine Triet is the third female director to win the prize, though to be honest, the festival has had more than a decade of controversial choices, many of which are highly questionable, in particular the last two years, where the distinction of such a prestigious award doesn’t often translate to box office success, as the theater was nearly empty when recently seen, yet in France it had the best opening of any Palme d’Or film since Laurent Cantet’s The Class (Entre Les Murs) (2008).  This is the kind of film where you may wonder what all the fuss is about, but the set-up is unusual, to say the least, as it’s a French court with a German suspect who speaks English, where it meanders for an inordinately long time in ludicrous speculation, as the police investigation offers no clear picture, so the courtroom drama is a whirlwind of theatrical suppositions, all intended to sway public opinion, yet what it actually reveals is how difficult it is to get at the philosophical question of what is truth.  For instance, the prosecution spends plenty of time on an argument the married couple had the day prior to the death, which gets into heated emotions, none of which shed any light on any potential murder, but does get inside the head of the characters, where it must be said that far less than 1% of these kinds of escalated marital tensions actually lead to murder, so how much weight can anyone give to such an operatic theory, yet it becomes a central thread of a courtroom drama that delves into excruciatingly uncomfortable personal moments that could just as easily have been called Anatomy of a Marriage.  It’s unlikely anyone will be swayed by these courtroom arguments, which may actually be the point, becoming a metaphor for all the biased rhetoric that fills the airwaves, mirroring the media frenzy that surrounds the case, where at some point you just want to shut it off, as it can get pretty disgusting, creating visceral anger when even the most reputable news outlets resort to this kind of subterfuge.   

The setting is an isolated mountain chalet in the Grenoble region of the French Alps heavily submerged in snow, as we see successful German author Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) being interviewed at home by graduate student Zoé (Camille Rutherford), yet despite the relaxed conversation, it is disrupted and eventually stopped by the unusually loud music coming from the upstairs loft where the unseen husband Samuel is busily working on repairs, yet this wildly exotic Caribbean steel drum music playing on a loop cranked up to high volume becomes a dominant theme of the film, a 2008 remix, which is an instrumental cover of rapper 50 Cent’s 2003 hit Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band - PIMP - YouTube (3:14), which couldn’t be more out of place in the snow covered Alpine region, yet literally swirls around in your head for days afterwards.  While it’s not immediately evident, Sandra has a blind son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), who goes out on a sunny mountain walk with his guide dog Snoop (who figures prominently in this movie), yet when they return they discover the dead body lying in the snow, which sets the story in motion.  An autopsy reveals his head wound was inflicted before his body hit the ground, putting Sandra under suspicion, as we see her conferring with her attorney Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud) before any charges are filed, with thoughts of arguing it was a self-inflicted suicide, as that is their best courtroom defense.  Because her son is blind, there’s not really a witness that can shed light on what led up to this event, other than what he heard, so police call in experts to summarize their best case scenarios.  This is a film that the less you know ahead of time works to its advantage, as the film is chalk full of revelations that are completely surprising and in some cases utterly transfixing, becoming more of a puzzle piece, with a lot of missing pieces.  To start with, let’s mention the way the director utilizes the camera, shot mostly in a cinéma vérité aesthetic by Simon Beaufils, especially in the beginning when they’re investigating the crime scene, as the characters seem intrinsically linked together by the framing and staging, offering little hints and clues that leave viewers questioning the findings.  Yet most importantly, this is a disturbing yet compelling study that values character over plot, where it’s that personalized viewpoint that makes this film so resonant, with powerful performances that are off the charts.  We’ve seen Sandra Hüller before in Thomas Stuber’s German film In the Aisles (In den Gängen) (2018), but most especially in Marin Ade’s hilariously unorthodox and thoroughly confounding 2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann (2016), also appearing in Triet’s earlier film Sibyl (2019) and Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023), where she exudes strength and vulnerability, yet it’s her intelligence and literary sense of self-awareness that elevates this into something more than it appears, yet there’s also an inescapable feeling that we can never fully trust her.  By allowing us to get a glimpse of her history, we realize just how complex a person she is, and that aspect alone really makes this film shine.  It’s a captivating mystery where you never really know what’s going to happen next, as a lengthy introductory sequence familiarizes us with the situation, and it comes as no surprise that she’s charged with a murder, but it’s the courtroom scenes that lure viewers into the heart of the matter.  While there’s legal banter that goes back and forth, as each side attempts to undercut the other side’s credibility, it gets decidedly different when the flamboyant prosecution resorts to a personalized smear campaign targeting the accused, which seems morally unethical, particularly when there is no criminal evidence associated with this line of attack, so this character assassination takes us into unprecedented territory for courtroom dramas.  Triet introduces a role reversal, as women have always been at home, while men have been free to explore the world through their careers and share ideas with others.  Women simply didn’t have that time, as they were too busy taking care of domestic tasks.  To find a female character who writes books, who is in the position to take the time to write, means that it’s the man who sacrifices in order to meet her needs, and he’s none too happy about it.  The prosecutor drives this point home, becoming a focal point of male resentment, which leads him into outlandish accusations suggesting it’s all her fault, contending she drove him to his death, but Sandra is having none of it.  Ironically, in death, Samuel finally gets the attention he never received during his lifetime.  

While some believe there are pacing issues, that the film drags in places due to its length, yet what happens in that courtroom is riveting, where the intensity level leaves no avenue of escape, as you’re stuck there, literally at the mercy of the filmmaker, where a relentless assault takes place before our eyes, which is not just distasteful, especially when the sexist prosecutor, Antoine Reinartz from Robin Campillo’s 2017 Top Ten List #8 BPM (Beats Per Minute (120 battements par minute), mocks the accused for suggesting any scenario other than his own, which, of course, is pure conjecture, so there’s this morally superior, omniscient voice of God offering judgement and condemnation, joined by well-rehearsed witness testimony to support his contention, with the accused a bit beffudled by it all, as it makes little sense to her, Anatomy Of A Fall - Justine TRIET Clip [Cannes] YouTube (57 seconds).  Viewers may feel the same way until a pivotal scene alters our perception, not only about what’s taking place in the courtroom but about the film as well, as there’s an extended flashback argument between the husband and wife that is wrought with tension, as both are writers, so the creative process is cleverly introduced into the film through a contentious relationship, where creative frustration, artistic ambition, and jealousy have a way of tearing them apart, feeling like something out of Bergman’s exhaustingly detailed television drama Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) (1973), which sheds light on a decades worth of emotional upheavals that are shown in excruciating detail.  This film takes an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Samuel (Samuel Theis) and Sandra’s conflicted relationship, as she reveals secrets about her past life and her turbulent relationship with her husband, where sexual and artistic insecurity play a large part, planting obstacles as an excuse for failure, which are only magnified in this trial and put in the spotlight, as Sandra exhibits both a sense of inner calm, while also going full throttle in moments of explosive rage.  She is right, however, that none of these singular moments alone define a person, as an entire life and marriage constitute a string of moments, where the sum of the parts provide a more accurate portrait.  Nonetheless, the prosecutor bases much of his argument on the underlying motivation behind Sandra’s written works, singling out specific texts where a character despises her weak husband and fantasizes about killing him, suggesting it draws from her own life and amounts to an autobiographical confession, though she exclusively writes works of fiction.  This exact same thing happens in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s LA VÉRITÉ (1960), as she is being judged not on the evidence but on her morality, for which she remains thoroughly unapologetic, as she is attacked for being promiscuous and bisexual, something that would be unthinkable for male writers, exposing inherently misogynistic prejudices in the legal system.  The extensive time in the claustrophobic courtroom allows viewers to get the full impact of this extraordinary scene, where the range of emotion continually escalates while the marital arguments and counterarguments resemble that of the trial.  Daniel sits through this courtroom drama and is exposed to these same revelations that the audience hears, but this is his family, so hearing some of the ugly secrets for the very first time has a strange effect on him, and his unexpected response says so much about this film, as he has perhaps the most superlative moment in the film, which evokes a dramatic silence of profound implications, yet he’s just an 11-year old kid, played with admirable fragility, where his witness testimony sends shivers through the spine for its utter clarity and innocence of spirit.  He’s at the heart of the film as well, becoming associated with a familiar Spanish theme that he furiously plays on the piano, Leyenda by Albeniz in HD - Andres Segovia YouTube (7:00), but is sidelined for a good part of it as a passive spectator, where the crux of the film may be seen through his eyes, so when he speaks up the results are staggering.  Written by the director with her partner Arthur Harari, having two children together, while also sharing writing credits on her previous film Sibyl (2019), Triet is a member of the French gender equality group Collectif 50/50, which also includes Jacques Audiard, Bertrand Bonello, Alice Diop, Céline Sciamma, Léa Seydoux, and Rebecca Zlotowski, and in her controversial awards speech at Cannes, she criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s highly unpopular change to the country’s retirement age and his suppression of the mass protests from the pension reform protest movement, as France has one of the lowest retirement ages of any industrialized country, while also having one of the lowest pension rates of any European country.  Perhaps because of this, Triet’s film was passed over as the French selection for Best International Film, instead choosing Vietnamese-born director Tran Anh Hung’s culinary romance THE TASTE OF THINGS starring French favorites Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel.