Editor Laurent Sénéchal is still processing his first Academy Award nomination, an experience he compares to living “in another dimension.”
This richly deserved recognition is one of five nominations for Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, a French drama that sends Sandra (the astonishingly good Sandra Hüller), a successful author, wife, and mother, to trial for murder after her husband mysteriously falls to his death from a third story window. As the trial progresses, secrets and resentments come to light, and the testimony of the couple’s young visually-impaired son (Milo Machado-Graner) becomes increasingly important. The drama moves back and forth from the courtroom to the family home as each new revelation casts new doubt on the stoic Sandra’s innocence.
Every moment in Anatomy of a Fall feels earned, a major feat given the two-and-a-half hour runtime, the story weaves together in between moments of blistering tension and melancholic tenderness, creating a fascinating meditation on marriage, motherhood, guilt, and navigating moral complexity.
My interview with Sénéchal was revelatory in that it not only helped me gain a greater appreciation for one of my favorite movies of the year, but in learning more about his distinct choices and approach to his craft, I’ve been able to also grasp a better understanding in the power of editing as an art form. Read on as Sénéchal explains how he tacked shifts in perspective, flashbacks, and the importance of Daniel’s piano sequences.
Awards Daily: First of all, congratulations on your Academy Award nomination. Was that something you were expecting?
Laurent Sénéchal: Not at all. I couldn’t expect something like that. It’s like being in another dimension. A nomination from the academy is something I couldn’t expect. I’m living in a big Truman show. And I’m trying to enjoy it and not to start thinking too much about it.
AD: I wanted to start by asking about your general approach to editing. Every editor has a different philosophy for how they go about their work. Tell me about yours and how that applied to Anatomy of a Fall.
LS: Great question because that’s something really crucial for me. For me, editing is like an adventure. You start with a plan, but you start with every material you need to build a boat. But you are at the very beginning of the ocean, and you’re trying to build your boat with your director.
But yeah, you’re going into an adventure and you are like the lieutenant for the movie and for your director. At one point, you are not alone, but for a long time, you are in charge of something that will be huge, and you have to lead it to point B. You don’t know what will happen when you start a movie.
AD: How did your approach change? How did you shift your ideas as you moved along this particular adventure?
LS: At the beginning, there were so many angles and so many subjects aside from the main characters.
At one point, we understood that we had to be very simple and direct, and we canceled the other things. For example, early on, there were a lot of scenes with journalists interviewing Sandra Voyter, Sandra Hüller’s character. There was a library showing where Sandra’s former book was a success. There were so many things early on. There were supposed to be split screens because of all the angles we wanted to show. Justine Triet and I are really fond of The Boston Strangler, the Richard Fleischer movie. And we wanted, at the beginning, to have multiple angles on this affair Sandra has. But we understood that it was far too complex for a movie that is already complex because the main character is in this ambiguous mood for the audience from the beginning to the end. We could not ask for too much from the audience.
We had to make it really simple and straight around Sandra and her son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner). Once we understood that, everything became clearer. It was easier to redesign or refine things.
AD: Tell me about the differences in approaching the domestic side of the film versus the courtroom scenes.
LS: That was one of the challenges we encountered because as soon as the trial starts in the movie, it was really hard to go back to the house, and then even harder to come into the courtroom again after that. We had to redesign this in order to find the balance and figure out how to use the audience’s patience and how to play it.
What we did was make the first part of the trial a long sequence and sub-sequence. It’s starting, and we are going like a train. You cannot stop it. It’s harsh. It’s raw. And after that, when we went back to the house, it had to be for a very special reason. The trial starts with a very long scene with the dead husband’s shrink, and this is where Sandra is really damaged.
Then after, we have a little scene with Daniel in front of the president of the courtroom, the judge, and she is saying to him, ‘Are you sure that you want to be here tomorrow because tomorrow is going to be harder for you and we have to work very freely.’ And Daniel is saying, ‘No, I want to stay.’ This change of point of view, going with Daniel and then going back to the house, was the right path. But, we discovered that while working— it was trying something else, and finding this, and screening that.
It was really interesting when we went back to the house for the first time with Sandra. I’ll take a little time to explain because it’s really interesting [in terms of] editing. At first, we had a very long and beautiful scene. Like a love story between Sandra and the lawyer, Vincent (Swann Arlaud), where they are drinking, and it’s snowing at night. This scene is still in the movie, but now it’s very short. Originally, Sandra was in [a state of] lightness; she was seducing him, and there was a kiss. It was all very beautiful. We loved it. Everybody loved it. The acting was amazing. But, we [decided] to redesign it to make us feel that she’s mentally stuck in the trial. She begins to question things. How are my relatives looking at me? She feels everyone is looking at her strangely, and she’s getting paranoid. Then we move to the scene where she will see her son and tell him, ‘I’m not that monster they are talking about.’
AD: I have to ask you about the climax of the film when we see the big argument between this couple. At first, we can only hear the audio of the fight in the courtroom, and then we have a flashback where we see the confrontation and how the tension escalates. How did that come together?
LS: That scene was one of the main warnings I gave Justine after reading the script. [Laughs]. I told her, ‘Are you sure you want to make a flashback here?’ What is the point of view? If you want to do that, maybe you have to be in Daniel’s point of view, but was he there? I don’t think so. The audience is not going to follow us. And she said, ‘No, don’t worry.’ She’s very instinctive, Justine. What I obtained is that Justine shot in a way so that the transition can happen later on.
And that’s why we edited [that scene] like that. So, at the beginning, there is the sound, and we can see the lines [of dialogue] on the television screens, and then we have the audience, Daniel and Sandra. Then, when the movement becomes not very accurate and concentrated, we go to the past. That’s how we managed this transition. But it was; it was a discovery for me that it works.
AD: You mentioned earlier that toward the end of Anatomy of a Fall, the perspective does shift to Daniel, and he’s given more agency, and he starts to make these big decisions. How did you manage that shift?
LS: One of the main things for us was to ensure that Daniel existed, that he had a full life, and existed before becoming this main character because during the first two hours, it’s only about Sandra, and Daniel is not on the screen very much. So, we had to redesign his powerfulness using the piano sequences. The piano scenes were important for us; we really used them to make the audience feel that this boy had something in him and was doing something. The piano lessons are like growing up, and there is something to that.
The one-year past ellipse between the first part of the film and the trial was not written like that. We put in the piano scene, where he’s playing better than before, there because we wanted him to be like the first stone of the cathedral. We wanted this “one year later” to start with Daniel. It’s a small shot, a small idea, a small transition, but it’s an editing trick to give the son these little moments, these very important moments before he becomes a main character.
He’s becoming an adult too early. That’s a big point of the movie. And for me, that’s what is beautiful in this movie. And it was in the script. I’m so happy to have worked on this movie. What was really interesting was the way Daniel was growing up and slowly becoming more like his mother. In the end, becoming an adult and a grown-up in Justine Triet’s movie is about becoming opaque and becoming active but having this mystery thing that we all have. Do we know who our parents are? Do we know what is life? What is death? Do we know everything about life? No, but we have to do it. We have to make our life. We have to make choices. And this is really interesting for me. If there is a message in Anatomy of a Fall, it’s that maybe while growing up, we have to accept and adapt to this life where we don’t know everything.
AD: What was it like for you to watch Anatomy of a Fall?
I remember when I first watched the film, and we got to the scene where Daniel goes to the attic window where his father had the accident. And there was this moment where I panicked and thought, ‘Oh no, is he going to jump?’ I showed the film to my mom recently, and she had the exact same reaction: this gasp of terror.
When watching Anatomy for the first time, what moments stood out more to you as an audience member than when you were working on it?
LS: Oh, that’s a great question. Thank you. It’s interesting that you are pointing out this scene because I didn’t feel it like you and your mother, but I think it’s one of my favorite moments. We can feel that Daniel has made a choice, but we don’t know which one. And we are with him as he plays the piano—the same Chopin Nocturne cue he was playing with his mother before. And he is playing only the right hand at the beginning. We see him; the camera is zooming in. And then there is a cut. We go upstairs, and then there are two hands playing. It’s becoming deeper.
Of course, I know that Daniel’s not going to jump, but it’s like he’s going as far as he can to where he thinks his dad was. He doesn’t make the gesture, but he’s at the top of the mountain; it’s the end of the journey for him. And then after we go on with the music, we go in the courtroom, in the cut.
And that’s the moment that I really liked in the movie. I was crying at the Cannes premiere. I couldn’t believe it. For me, it’s like I didn’t edit it. At that moment, I couldn’t see the work. It’s so impressive. The acting is amazing; it’s so deep. I forget the work, and I become an audience there.
Anatomy of a Fall is available to rent and own on VOD.
