‘I stand by that speech’: Palme d’Or winner Justine Triet defiant after being called ‘spoiled child’ and ‘ungrateful’

Justine Triet endured a furious backlash after tearing strips off the Macron government in a Cannes acceptance speech. Now, the French director’s film may be headed for even bigger prizes.

Justine Triet poses with The Palme d'Or Award at the 76th annual Cannes film festival. Picture: Getty Images

Seven months ago, when French filmmaker Justine Triet took out the Palme d’Or, the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, she stood at the winner’s podium in a chic black satin suit and white T-shirt, and launched into a fiery and highly politicised speech.

Stooping slightly, and with the cast of her prize-winning film, Anatomy of a Fall, assembled behind her, Triet claimed that demonstrations against the Macron government’s pension reforms had been “denied and repressed in a shocking way’’. The director, who had been presented with her elegant, palm-shaped trophy by screen legend Jane Fonda, also attacked the “commodification of culture that the neo-liberal government defends” and called on the French government to do more to support young filmmakers.

The official response to Triet’s criticism was as swift as it was brutal. French Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak accused her of being “unfair” and “ungrateful” and pointed out her Palme d’Or winning film “could not have been made without our French model of film financing’’, (which is generous by Australian standards).

Cannes Mayor David Lisnard tweeted that Triet had delivered “the speech of a spoiled child”. The director’s comments were also fiercely debated on French television, on social media and in French parliament.

However, the controversy did little to impede the runaway international critical and commercial success of Anatomy of a Fall – and there is now talk of this taut courtroom thriller being nominated for key Oscar categories including Best Film, Screenplay, Director and Actress. Triet’s film has been nominated for four Golden Globes, including best motion picture/drama and best non-English language picture. It won seven European Film Awards in December, including the top categories of best film and best director and has sold 1.3 million tickets in France. It has also performed strongly at the US box office and been hailed by reviewers as “magnificently slippery” (The New Yorker) and “one of the best movies about good marriages gone bad ever made’’ (Rolling Stone).

Yet this cleverly ambiguous murder mystery was controversially overlooked as France’s Oscar pick for best international feature film, sparking claims the omission may have been payback for Triet’s outspokenness at Cannes. France nominated a more traditional film, a foodie period romance, The Taste of Things, starring Juliette Binoche, and Triet called that decision “a huge disappointment’’.

Despite the ferocious reaction to her Cannes address, Triet doesn’t feel she did anything wrong. “I definitely stand by that speech and it was not just for me,’’ the director tells Review over Zoom, speaking in French against a stark white wall. “ … What I said was taken out of context, but in essence, it was an altruistic speech.’’

Justine Triet receives The Palme d'Or Award for 'Anatomy of a Fall' from Jane Fonda. Picture: Getty Images

Calm but resolute, the 45-year-old says it is the role of artists to challenge those in power. Her criticisms were, she says, “not only about the government, it was about society as a whole, and how we are consuming video and films now with platforms such as Netflix. It’s hard to compete when you are a small player. It’s hard to compete in those environments and the (Macron) government needs to look out for those smaller players.’’

Speaking mostly in rapid-fire French, she uses a translator for this interview, and clarifies her last remark: “I do not have anything against Netflix. I was focusing on people starting out, and Netflix does look for young talent.’’ This qualification may reflect a new-found caution on Triet’s part, following the Cannes furore.

On the other hand, if she was shaken by the fallout from her acceptance speech, she doesn’t show it. She says philosophically: “It was really interesting what I experienced through that. I learned a lot about our country.’’

In some ways, the filmmaker shredding the French government while accepting France’s most prestigious film prize, echoes the uncompromising approach of her protagonist, Sandra, in Anatomy of a Fall. Played by German actor Sandra Huller, Sandra Voyter is a renowned writer and translator who is accused of murder after her husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), is found dead outside their chalet in the remote French Alps. Was Samuel pushed to his death by Sandra, or did he commit suicide?

In the absence of hard evidence, Sandra’s life as an ambitious author who conducts extramarital affairs with women and leaves it to her husband to homeschool their sight-impaired son, comes under unforgiving scrutiny inside a French courtroom. As disturbing evidence emerges about the corrosive tensions and professional rivalries in Sandra and Samuel’s relationship, the film explores whether the French legal system is judging Sandra purely as a murder suspect, or for being a bisexual, unapologetically career-centred wife and mother.

Says Triet: “Sandra is the opposite of a lot of women that you see in (crime) films – women who are highly made up, who are femme fatales, who are seductive and manipulative. Sandra doesn’t make any excuses for how she is trying to behave. Sometimes some men I have spoken to say they don’t really like that – they don’t find that so attractive, but I was trying to depict a modern woman.’’

The writer-director says some people might be “threatened” by a woman like Sandra, who doesn’t apologise for her affairs, or for being a more successful writer than her husband. “This is a theme I have explored in my other films as well,’’ she says.

Sandra Huller in Palme d'Or-winning film, Anatomy of a Fall.

Anatomy of a Fall is Triet’s fourth feature film. Her second feature, comedy-drama Victoria (2016) opened Critics’ Week in Cannes and was nominated for five Cesars (French film awards), while 2019’s Sibyl, about a psychotherapist who becomes obsessed with a patient, competed for the Palme d’Or in 2019. Both of those films starred Virginie Efira, one of France’s best-known actors, while Huller played a supporting role in Sibyl.

Triet wrote Anatomy of a Fall with Huller in mind, believing she would “bring complexity and depth to … this liberated woman, who was judged for her sexuality, her career, and her motherhood’’. The actor’s coolly self-possessed performance has earned her a best female actor Golden Globe nomination and a best actress win at the European Film Awards.

Huller’s Sandra rarely breaks down, despite the enormous pressures bearing down on her and her only child – 11-year-old Daniel (Milo Michado Graner) – who becomes a witness in his mother’s trial. Critics have described Huller’s performance as “impeccable” and “superb”.

Triet says that when casting an accused criminal, “you think often this kind of person is going to be mysterious and hard to understand. But she (Huller) comes across as very straight up, very honest, very transparent. She’s not trying to deceive or be duplicitous. She comes across with something really frank and raw in the way that she plays the role. I think that’s what creates tension for people, too; they can’t really understand it …. Apart from that, she’s also just a great actress.’’

The film started as a joint lockdown writing exercise by Triet and her life and writing partner, Arthur Harari, and has garnered a best screenplay award at the European Film Awards and a Golden Globe nomination in the same category. The Paris couple, who juggled the project with their two children, presumably worked out a more harmonious division of labour than Sandra and Samuel manage to do in the film.

In the climactic scene, a secret recording of an ugly and violent dispute between Sandra and Samuel is played to a shocked jury. Screaming and slapping is heard, household items are smashed – and it’s not always clear who is abusing who. Confronting court scenes such as these plant seeds of doubt about his mother’s innocence into the mind of Daniel, whose sight was seriously damaged in an accident when he was four.

Graner gives a powerful, emotionally exposed performance as a child who suddenly finds himself responsible for his widowed mother’s fate. Triet says she and a film coach worked with the young actor for three months “very intensively” before shooting started, in order to “grab” complex emotions from him. They were also aware they were working with a child, so “we were forced to be very careful on set’’.

A mother of two daughters, Triet adds with a knowing chuckle: “Milo, really in his life was quite unusual. He has no cellphone … he’s a real nerd. He’s obsessed by books and by political things. He’s not the typical French or Parisian child. He was really mature.’’

She and Harari consulted a lawyer so the court scenes would seem authentic. She says her knowledge of the French legal system also came from making documentaries involving real court cases. Switching from French to English, she says: “I spent a lot of time in courtrooms when I was younger and I used to watch lots of movies or TV shows (set in court), so I’m pretty close to all these things.’’

She admits she and Harari initially entertained some “bad ideas” for their script that were heavily influenced by American legal dramas and films. “We are in France; we don’t want to make another US courtroom movie,’’ she explains. “The fact is that France is really special, because we have a really anarchic (legal) system because everybody can talk whenever they want.’

The dead man in the snow, Samuel Maleski, is played by Samuel Theis. Picture: Supplied

Despite its beautiful alpine setting, Anatomy of a Fall is an intensely interior film, switching between the court and the couple’s home. Its tight visual focus creates a sense of claustrophobia, accentuating the emotional and psychological strain Sandra and Daniel are under.

Triet, who was raised in Paris as part of a European Buddhist community, worked in relative obscurity as a documentary maker before she turned to feature films. She told one journalist that when she first started making documentaries, “I felt all the places were already taken’’ in French cinema.

She is just the third woman to win the Palme d’Or and she says of this: “It was really something amazing. It was a beautiful and a powerful moment in my life. I don’t think I will feel that sort of emotion again … It really transformed me.’’ The previous female winners were antipodean director Jane Campion, for The Piano, and France’s Julia Ducournau for Titane.

“It was an immense honour to join the J club – Jane, Julia and now me. I’m hoping that club can extend to other letters of the alphabet,’’ she says. As for her next film project, she says “I have a few embryonic ideas’’. She jokes: “I just know that I have a very expensive project and a very, very not expensive project.’’

Asked whether opportunities for women directors have improved, she replies: “Progress is always too slow, but we are really starting to see change. There has been a transformation that has started. It’s an issue that concerns everyone now, not just feminists. “I see that as well in my daughters. I have a daughter who is 13 and there are definitely differences in mentality in her generation. For me, between the ages of 18 and 38, it was not a topic that we spoke about.

“I am happy to see that change start in my lifetime, but we are still very much at the beginning.”

Anatomy of a Fall is released in Australia on January 25, 2024.