EPISODE 238: Crew Call: Anatomy of a Fall Film Editor
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CLIP For achievement in film editing, the nominees are Anatomy of a Fall.
BETH ACCOMANDO It is not very often that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes foreign language films in its craft categories. But this year it could not ignore the perfect calibration of Laurent Sénéchal’s editing in Anatomy of a Fall.
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BETH ACCOMANDO Welcome back to listener supported KPBS Cinema Junkie, I'm Beth Accomando.
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BETH ACCOMANDO Anatomy of a Fall also garnered nominations for Best Picture as well as Best Actress for Sarah Huller, Best Director for Justine Triet and Best Writer for Triet and Arthur Harari. The film rachets up tension with the precision of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. The story involves a couple who have a fight and then the husband turns up dead, apparently from an accidental fall. But then the police suspects the wife of foul play and her blind son is the sole witness who might be able to clear her. The film shows how seemingly trivial things in a marriage can take on incriminating dimensions when played out in court in front of a jury. This is a film of exquisite craft and a surprising amount of nail-biting tension as we feel a constant sense of stress and unease, much of it the result of Laurent Sénéchal’s fine editing. (:38)
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BETH ACCOMANDO I need to take one quick break and then I will be back with a crew call with Anatomy of a Fall’s film editor Laurent Sénéchal. He’ll explain what a film editor actually does and discuss the fine art of building tension, suspense, and a sly sense of ambiguity.
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BETH ACCOMANDO Welcome back to Cinema Junkie. I’m Beth Accomando. Anatomy of a Fall was among my top ten films of 2023. Sarah Huller plays Sandra, a woman who finds herself under suspicion.
CLIP As you can see an accidental fall is hard to defend… stop, I did not kill him… that is not the point.
BETH ACCOMANDO The film is a clever mystery that manages to avoid answering the question of whodunit while still leaving the audience feeling richly rewarded. I asked Laurent what he saw as the particular challenges of such a film.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL The main challenge for us was to maintain an ambiguity cloud zone around the main character played by Sarah Hüller. But we had to do that without being in a game, in a tricky game, like, she's guilty and then she's not guilty. We wanted to be elsewhere. We wanted to be with her. We wanted to build some very huge empathy for her, even if we wanted doubts to go on till the end. So it was that line, strange line to find and to sculpt.
BETH ACCOMANDO One of the things that's really impressive about the film is it feels like really well calibrated. Like every note, every moment just seems like really carefully planned. So with a long movie like this, how do you kind of go through that calibration and kind of make sure that you're ratcheting up that tension with every scene?
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL Thank you for your. It's kind. And because we really pay attention to this and it's mountains and mountains of work with Justine trying to refine and refine things. But we are starting from the material with Justine. It's always the acting, the performances of the actors, actors performances that are the main door, the first door, the starting point for her. And then we are trying to have this large road, but not too large to maintain some tension, as you said. But we didn't want, because Jesse never wants to push ideas and push judgments on her characters. So we had to let the audience, to let the viewer make his own trip on that. And it's really on the graft. We were really trying and redesigning things, such as the boy, the fact that he is becoming the main character at the end. But we had to make him exist and be really present during the whole 1st 2 hours. And we made this with piano redesigning and rethinking the sporting of where he's going to be seen. I don't know how to say. It only works step by step.
BETH ACCOMANDO And the film does have a certain Hitchcock quality to it. Was that something that influenced you in any way? Were his films something that you looked to?
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL Of course, for us and for everybody on earth, it's like a reference, of course. And we had this idea to find one sequence where we were. How to say it in English? In French, we say a clander. We wanted the audience maybe to think about Hitchcock climates. It's the scene where the lawyer at the beginning is like visiting the chalet, the house, and going upstairs and there we have that strange woman, blonde woman, at the back of the. In this scene particularly, we knew that we were, like, doing some Hitchcockian thing.
BETH ACCOMANDO One of the scenes that was really interesting, and I'm curious, from an editing point of view, how you tackled it and if you tried different things. But in the courtroom, there's a moment where we're hearing audio and we don't get to see what's going on to match the audio. I think we see it later. So what was the decision process? Did you want to make sure that that audio was heard first and not seen? And how did you want, like, what did you want to cut to while it's playing? To kind of build that sense of.
[00:04:22.26] - LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL Tension you are talking about the argument scene.
CLIP You are not a victim, not at all. Your generosity conceals something dirtier and meaner. You're incapable of facing your ambitions, and you resent me for it. But I'm not the one who put you where you are. I've nothing to do with it. You're not sacrificing yourself, as you say. You choose to sit on the sidelines because you're afraid, because your pride makes your head explode before you can even come up with the an idea. And now you wake up and you're 40, and you need someone to blame. And you're the one to blame.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL What is interesting for this scene is that when I read the script, I told Justine, wow, what are you doing? Because it was written as a flashback. But I told her, which point of view is that? Are we in the head of the boy? But he was not there. So what is that? Is it like a God thing? We move the audience? And she said, it's only cinema, don't worry. But I asked her to shoot in a way that we could have options for the transition, because I knew that she would be right. Maybe she might be right, but I knew that it was not obvious and for sure that with a cut, very rapidly, it was going to work. So in the editing room, I really insisted about one thing I wanted that it was for sure an audio realistically played in the courtroom for a long time. And we are seeing, I think, the boy and Sandra, and for a long time, and we were also seeing that the text, the lines are written in the screens of the courtroom. And then when we are a bit lazy as an audience, we are lying on this. We are only listening. Then I put the image and I go into the flashback. And this is the way I found to this guy's thing. We tried earlier it didn't work, so we had to really find it. But it's also our seasonal thing. I didn't know before how to do it, but I had to do it because there were no other option because I didn't have enough material to stay in the courtroom.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, and courtrooms are really hard to do because on a certain level, nothing is happening. It's just talking. So what's the challenge of that and how do you piece it together to kind of add a sense of tension or drama to it?
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL This was maybe the second main challenge for us. I talk about the boy, but when we went into the courtroom, second part of the movie, we knew that with those long scenes, we had to refresh how we were in the courtroom. And Justine really is breaking all what was planned for every scene. She is really avoiding the script and all the previous ideas. And she was always saying, well, for this scene, what are we going to do? Where is the good material? I want to stay with Sandra very long. And we were trying to find what she's calling the code of each scene. And that's a way to refresh the fact that we are still in the same place. It's hard, it's raw, it's rough, the way we are showing people working. For instance, when the boy is testifying for the first time, there is nobody in the courtroom because he's a young guy and the protection of the justice is supposed to preserve him. But you have this shot turning around while the prosecutor and the lawyer are talking about him, about his handicap. He's like listening. And it was not supposed to be this long, that shot. And even the moves were not supposed to be used at the beginning. But on set, Justine saw the director of photography making those movements to have all the shots for the scene, for the editing. And she said, hey, it's very nice what you are doing here on the screen. I'm seeing that it's good. And he was saying, but it's not what we decided. But she insisted. And so he made smoother movements and slower movements around the boy. Like, we'll see if we are going to use that. And of course, it was so nice. I just had to disguise a cut to make it longer again, even more longer. But this is like a new way to direct the audience, to direct the movie for each scene. That was our challenge. And sometimes it's only about trust the audience. For instance, after the argument, when we are staying like 20 minutes with the prosecutor and the lawyer in a very long scene, the last scene of the courtroom before the last testimony of the boy. It's a very long scene and our goal was to trust the audience that they were going to stay with us in this very intense and, like, boxing dialogs scene.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, you talk about trusting the audience but what the film does that I love is that it doesn't condescend to us either in the sense of telling us what we're supposed to think or telling us what we're supposed to feel. We're piecing things together, which is much more engaging and also much more exciting to watch. So I appreciate the way that you're not saying, like, oh, this has to be her point of view. And because we're on a close up, it has to be true. Or, and how when you're tackling that in the editing room, are there things that you edit? And then you go back to and say, we revealed too much or we gave too much this way.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL In fact, every Justine trier movies are like that. You are in front of a character and you are free to make your own opinion about her. Your reasonable doubts are always working. But with anatomy, it's like the flower of this thing she wants, she is doing every time she's recording actors, she and actresses. Here we are in front of a trial and we are like a member of the jury. And this was the idea. So we had to really design the fact that some scenes were building Sandra as a very manipulative character. And then after, we could not see her having those really nice feelings around her. Boy, when she's talking about the handicap, for me, it's a great moment when she's saying, I never saw my son as handicapped. It's a great moment. But this moment was killed by a previous scene where she was in this very high lightness and alcohol thing and seduction with her lawyer at night. It's just before. And, well, we had to cut so many great things because Sarah gave us so many options. She's an amazing actress. We have a golden garbage because we had to cut so many great things to have this possibility for the audience to not to fall into one or the other version. That was really nice. Complexity. Complexity is in the center of all we were doing and building. And even the boy is becoming like his mother at the end is becoming complex. We don't really exactly know what are his feelings and even if he's inventing things or not. That was the program, but it was hard to do.
BETH ACCOMANDO And I don't think most people really understand what an editor does. People tend to just say like, oh, that movie was too long. Why didn't they cut it shorter? That's the only time they seem to mention editing. So can you give a little insight to people as to what your process is like? And particularly with Justine?
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL Yeah, you're right. It's an invisible job. It's very important job for movies, you know that. And it's very hard to explain what it is exactly that we are doing in the dark. So I think that previously, just before talking about this way, to reshape things, to tell a story to the audience, we pay really an extreme attention to what the audience is supposed to feel, but we are betting things we don't know exactly. So for me, editing is like when you are telling a story to your children before they are going to sleep. You have to be good, you have to have a good story. We have to refine and always invite the audience to be with us. And sometimes the audience has to work. It's really good when they have some work, but not too much. And this is like a dance with the audience, but we don't know each other. That's the beautiful thing about it.
BETH ACCOMANDO And for you, working with Justine, at what point do you come on board? Are you there from the very beginning, before they start shooting? Do you come on after footage is starting to roll in? What's that part of the process?
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL Like this time I didn't even make an assembly edit because she needs to start the journey and make all the journey with me. She cannot see an assembly edit or graph cut made without her. It was hard previously because it's the third film we are doing together. And so we decided also because the script was rather solid than the previous movies because of the trial. It's like a program and you are not lost in the structure you are building. We went scene by scene with her, starting from the acting, as I said, and it's long, but yeah, she doesn't want to be bored. She doesn't want a scene that is looking like every other movie she has seen. So she's like also an artist like that. She has been studied in the Beaux-Arts de Paris and she's rather like an artist for me. She wants to have fun, and for her, fun is being surprised by what she has done and have new ideas every time. So sometimes it's hard because you have to have stamina, but it's really exciting. It's really nice to work with her and she's very funny.
BETH ACCOMANDO And editing is not what I would probably call a glamorous position. In Hollywood, people don't generally think like, oh, I want to be a celebrity editor. But how did you go into this profession? What was it about it that attracted you, that made you think like, this is what I want to do, is sit in a dark room editing film all day.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL It's a good question, but maybe I have to talk about that with my shrink again. Because to be honest, I wanted to be a director, director myself at the beginning. When I was younger, I felt that editing was the great place to learn how to do that movies. And it was also a way to earn my life when I was younger, as an assistant editor and I was editing the short films and I became an editor. And I think that I didn't choose this job, really. But I'm sure that it's not by chance that I'm there. I think I'm okay with the dark. I'm okay with going really about details when we are working. And I think that it's great to also not have maybe the fire so close to you as directors have. We are like teched when we are only technicians on the movie, members of the crew. It's maybe safer, a safer place. But being an editor is being as the director in the machine room of the story. So it's like being really where for me, it's the funniest place as a director without all the pressure on you. So maybe you are my shrink today. BETH ACCOMANDO Well, I always liked editing because you can try so many things without 100 people waiting for you to make a decision and kind of can make a mistake and then just walk away from it and just go like, well, okay, I'll just put that back together, back the way it was.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL That's true. That's completely true. And it's a place where truth, if it exists, is there. We are editors. I think we are really humble because we know that it's hard and it's not with the actors in a set. You have to play something with directors and even with producers, really often in an editing room, everyone is like, with no masks, we are in front of what are we going to do? And this is great. This is a great job for this. And also, when you are at the end of an editing process for a long Fiji film, you cannot really see as a fresh eyes as the movie. But you are like remembering all the screenings that you had and you are trying to be digging in your own memories of all those screenings and tries. It's funny. Yeah, it's a good job. Maybe I'm not going to try to make movies myself, I'm going to stay there.
BETH ACCOMANDO Don't let that shrink talk you out of it. I actually put this film on my ten best list for women helmed horror films because I feel that not in a traditional sense is this a horror film, but it has all like the beats of a horror film. That sense of tension and kind of stress and anxiety you get when you're kind of uncertain about what's going on. And I'm just wondering if you see in any way, shape or form like the film as horror, or that the pacing or the structure has any of that.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL We were never thinking like that, but we knew that we were making a gender movie. Our idea was to assume that we had this really manipulative operation at the beginning. You will never know what happened. This is the big thing we are doing. But after our decision was to accompany the character, as in John Cassavetes movie, we wanted to be like, with this intimate climate around this family, this woman and this boy. Even if doubts are still burning somewhere in the head of the audience. So I think that we knew that we were playing this game with tension and maybe scary things, but we were using this in a candid way. We wanted to be sensitive about all this and to maybe do this, but in a European or maybe French way, with dialogs with no score movies. No score music on the movie. We wanted it to be really like an in between, a balanced thing around an author movie. An author, a European movie and a gender movie. More broad, more well spread movie. We're trying to balance it.
BETH ACCOMANDO And one last thing, and you don't have to tell me exactly the answer, but I am curious. Did you and Justine either have an opinion or know for a fact what happened? Or was that also kind of a mystery and ambiguity to you as well?
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL I have two way to answer that. For me, as an editor, I never even ask myself that answer to cope, because I knew that, yeah, all the movie was around not answering that. And maybe it's an ode to complexity in life. And what is great is that it's not very intellectual and clever things for smart people. It's with feelings, really direct feelings at the end, when they are reconnecting the mother and the boy.
CLIP I just want you to know one thing. I'm not a monster.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL It's really complex what they are living. And we can feel it really organically with the silence and the looks they have. We are like living with them was this strange moment. And even when the dog is coming. The dog is exactly like a human being there. We have these feelings that are really nice and simple and direct feelings, but complexity is what, the way Justine is looking our course, maybe. I think she said that the first question she had before having this idea of the anatomy of salt was, do my ten years old daughter know me or do I know her? And you can ask for yourself and everyone can be in front of what you think you know, but you don't know your intimates, your relatives. You cannot know everything about what's around you. And it was a play around that.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, I want to thank you very much for talking and thank you for this wonderful film.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I can feel that you enjoyed it and it's really great.
BETH ACCOMANDO Yes.
LAURENT SÉNÉCHAL Really pleasant to have this chat with.
BETH ACCOMANDO
That was Laurent Sénéchal, film editor for Anatomy of a Fall. He was nominated for a best editing Oscar and you can see if he takes home the gold on March 10.
That wraps up another edition of KPBS listener supported Cinema Junkie. If you enjoy the podcast, then please share it with a friend because your recommendation is the best way to build an addicted audience. You can also help by leaving a review.
Till our next film fix, I’m Beth Accomando your resident Cinema Junkie.
