In Justine Triet’s cerebral thriller Anatomy of a Fall, the calamity arrives without ceremony. It seems like just another day for a family up in the Alps, filled with work and home renovations. The child goes for a walk, leading the dog through fresh snow. As he arrives back home, there’s the faintest hint of a turn: the dog begins to whine, agitated. We see a man’s body lying on the snow, dark crimson blood pooling around the head. There is panic, confusion, and the inevitable question: was he pushed?

The only other person in the house at the time was the victim’s wife, the novelist Sandra Voyter, played expertly by Sandra Hüller (who previously made a star turn as Toni Erdmann’s frazzled consultant). When the investigation uncovers details that don’t add up, Sandra turns from witness to prime suspect. She insists she’s innocent. What follows is a taut, unsentimental courtroom drama in which the couple’s longstanding grievances and secrets are aired in the name of justice, and increasingly a source of public titillation. You can hear a hint of glee when the prosecutor pulls out a novel of Voyter’s and reads a passage in which the protagonist imagines her partner’s lifeless body. Her lawyers insist that fiction is not real life. They also know that such protestations can seem trivial if what is on trial is no longer the supposed crime at hand, but Sandra’s character.

One of the most intriguing things about the film is what it chooses to withhold. At a time when cinema seems filled with flashbacks, showing scenes from the before-times in a soft luxuriant glow (reflecting perhaps the vogue for stories that plumb the original trauma), there’s a boldness in the director’s choice to make Sandra’s husband Samuel mostly absent, marked as a ghost. It is Sandra’s present that is forensically examined. Gender politics simmer throughout the trial, as lawyers point to Sandra’s bisexuality and history of affairs, and pick apart her literary success in light of Samuel’s abandoned writing projects. An audio recording of the couple captures Samuel arguing about taking on more emotional labour and childcare in the marriage. It leads to one of the film’s rare (and certainly not glowy) flashbacks, taking us into the room as the couple’s conflict comes to a head. Then, in the climactic moments, the curtains are drawn. We’re back in the courtroom, hearing the slaps and heavy breathing and indistinct clatter, seeing Sandra’s composed face, and the bustling public gallery.

True crime and courtroom theatrics have captivated the public imagination in recent years, dangling a comforting conceit: that people can be pinned down, the perpetrator and motive identified, murder weapon located and brandished with full incriminating splendour. Anatomy of a Fall unravels the fantasy. For every psychoanalyst recalling a husband filled with anger and resentment is a wife who remembers a man who was, yes, sometimes frustrated but who also lived his life; for every expert saying that the blood splatter points to murder is another testifying that unequal bodyweight distributions suggest an accidental fall. “You just have to make a decision,” a friend tells Daniel, the child caught in the middle of a messy, sad public scandal. The truth may come out eventually, but the only thing that is certain to arrive is the wreckage.