After they won their fourth Palme D’Or at Cannes over the last five years, disruptive upstart studio/distributor NEON posted a pic of Michael Jordan after he won the ’96 Finals with the Bulls on Instagram, which is the sort of shitheel swagger that makes a surprisingly conversational film nerd laugh (and God knows how few of those there are). Are we gonna dig into this statement briefly? You bet your ass, in honor of them dropping the trailer for Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, their latest win, earlier on Thursday, and we promise it’ll be nice and short.
Parasite is very clearly the best comparison of the bunch to its equivalent Finals trophy: Jordan and the Bulls ran all over the last vestiges of the Showtime Lakers, which is basically exactly what happened when Bong Joon-Ho announced he was bringing a movie to Cannes in 2019. Titane was the harder win- a fundamentally different proposition than something like Parasite, which would go on to sweep awards ceremonies around the world- and that goes nicely with the Trail Blazers series there. Triangle of Sadness is also a pretty good point of comparison with the Phoenix Suns series in ’93, in which Jordan ensured that Charles Barkley wouldn’t get a ring (much like Ruben Ostlund ensured that Park Chan-wook, who genuinely made one of the best films of 2022, wouldn’t take home the Palme), and also marked the collective eye-roll at them winning again.
This means Anatomy of a Fall is the series against the Supersonics, which is more notable for Jordan coming back than pretty much anything else. On the other hand, this means their next two wins, should the streak continue, will probably be all-timers. Also, who the hell is gonna be their Karl Malone?
Anyway, the trailer. Take a look:
Here’s a synopsis, which reads like the plot of a Bruno Dumont flick before he got obsessed with Joan of Arc:
“For the past year, Sandra, her husband Samuel, and their eleven-year-old son Daniel have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found dead in the snow below their chalet, the police question whether he was murdered or committed suicide. Samuel’s suspicious death is presumed murder, and Sandra becomes the main suspect. What follows is not just an investigation into the circumstances of Samuel’s death but an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel’s conflicted relationship.”
Anatomy of a Fall hits theaters stateside on October 13. It’ll be one of the big North American Premieres at TIFF next month, and we’re excited that we’ll finally get to check out what everybody’s been buzzing about since May. This is a pretty great consolation prize for Killers of the Flower Moon not being in the line-up, and we’ll take it.