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Premiering at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, this fourth feature, directed and co-written by Justine Triet, won the Palme d'Or, making Triet only the third female director to do so after Julia Ducournau (Titane) and Jane Campion (The Piano). Triet's narrative was under consideration to be France's submission to the 96th Academy Awards for Best International Feature, but France went with another choice. Its distributor, Neon, is pushing it for other categories, such as Best Actress and even Best Picture. According to Gold Derby, the odds are in its favor.

If one enjoys courtroom dramas, one might be primed to enjoy Triet's film. If one is not familiar with the criminal justice system in France, one might be curious to see how French courts differ from United States' courts. In terms of procedure, the U.S. has what's known as the Fifth Amendment, which means that a defendant in a criminal case can't be compelled to testify during a trial, or at any point during a legal proceeding. This is apparently not the case in France. Not only that, but apparently a defendant can be questioned by the prosecutor at any time and the defendant doesn't even have to be at the witness stand. It makes the whole thing feel unstructured and possibly chaotic.

Sandra Hller (I'm Your Man and Toni Erdmann) stars as Sandra Voyter, a German author who married a French teacher who's also an aspiring author. She has a son with him and it looks like they live in a chalet in the French alps. Sandra is in between books. She instead works as a translator, while her husband is a stay-at-home dad who is trying to come up with writing but isn't as successful. He instead spends time renovating the chalet. Sandra feels estranged from her husband and has so for some years. When he's found dead, she becomes the prime suspect.

Swann Arlaud (By the Grace of God) co-stars as Vincent Renzi, the lawyer representing Sandra. He's a no-nonsense guy who pushes Sandra to go along with his theory that her husband's death was due to suicide, even though Sandra doesn't believe it. This film doesn't show much of his process, but he prepares himself very well and we come to see that he and his co-counsel are very knowledgeable about Sandra. There's a bit of drama, which catches them off guard, but otherwise Vincent seems more than competent. His knowledge of things though possibly comes from a prior and even current friendship he has with Sandra.

Milo Machado-Graner also co-stars as Daniel Maleski, the 11-year-old son to Sandra. He's visually impaired due to an accident when he was 4. He has a seeing-eye dog named Snoop. Unfortunately, he's called to testify at the trial. There's an interesting aspect about that, which hasn't been explored, certainly not in American courtroom dramas. Here, the court assigns a social worker to keep watch over Daniel, so that his mother doesn't do or say anything to influence his testimony.

There's a scene where we see this social worker named Marge, played by Jehnny Beth, a real-life musician, following Sandra and Daniel. It's implied that she's akin to a live-in nanny because otherwise how could she keep watch over Sandra and Daniel? The trial doesn't start for a year, so the implication is that she lives with them for a year. The film rather skips over this aspect and how intrusive that would be or what kind of relationship develops from that.

After the first hour, the film takes place mostly in court. I'm not sure what the intention of Triet was. I assume she wanted it to be a mystery or a question of Sandra's guilt or innocence. However, it got to a point where I fully believed that Sandra was innocent. Triet's question or mystery was neither a question nor a mystery because the so-called evidence was never convincing, mainly because a lot of it is speculation. Also, the behavior of Sandra never suggests she's the psychotic murderer that the prosecution is trying to paint.

Having seen so many legal dramas, particularly on television, most recently, the second season of Netflix's The Lincoln Lawyer (2022), I thought Triet crafted the narrative to put us on the side of Sandra in order to undermine the expectations. There is a scene where we see Sandra arguing with her husband, which is supposed to set up her possible motive for killing him. Triet seemed to want to use the scene to put doubt in the audience's mind about Sandra's guilt, but it only put me more firmly on Sandra's side. The so-called motive never felt solid by the end.

As such, the courtroom scenes weren't as thrilling as I had hoped. The best courtroom dramas always present both the defense and prosecution as equally strong. Here, I never felt the prosecution was as strong. I always felt like the prosecution was grasping for straws.

Rated R for language, sexual references and violent images.

Running Time: 2 hrs. and 31 mins.

In select theaters.

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