Anatomy of a Fall star Sandra Hüller: ‘I myself can never fully understand a character’

German actress Sandra Hüller has been a fixture in European arthouse for years.

The Cannes Film Festival is a typically glitzy, star-studded affair, with actors emerging from around the world to tout their performances in some of the most anticipated films of the year. This year was no exception, with plenty of eyes on the enormous casts of films like Asteroid City and the forthcoming Killers of the Flower Moon.

But while the red carpets welcomed Leonardo DiCaprio and Scarlett Johansson, there was another, less widely-known star who was colloquially crowned this year’s ‘Queen of Cannes’ for her appearance in two of the buzziest, most acclaimed films of the year - the Palme D’Or (first prize)-winning Anatomy of a Fall and the Grand Prix (second prize)-winning The Zone of Interest - Sandra Hüller, the formidable German actress at the centre of these two equally formidable films.

For Hüller, selecting her roles is about listening to her instincts. ‘I try to avoid things I’ve seen before or that could be for someone else,’ she tells me, ‘When there is someone I think could do it better, I don’t take the role. It’s always a decision about whether I want to spend time with the topic, if I want to be in the presence of the energy of a character.’

Hüller has been a fixture in European arthouse for years now, but is best known to international audiences for her astonishing work in the immense and bizarre father-daughter dramedy Toni Erdmann, which featured, among other bonkers moments within its sprawling three-hour runtime, Hüller’s passionate karaoke rendition of Whitney Houston’s ‘The Greatest Love of All’.

In Anatomy of a Fall, which opened this year’s Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival and which releases wide in New Zealand this week, Hüller plays Sandra, an acclaimed writer in the throes of a tense, disintegrating marriage with her husband Samuel. To give an idea of how fraught things are – Samuel has taken to long periods holed up in the attic of their idyllic, snow-driven alpine chalet, blasting a steel drum version of 50 Cent’s ‘P.I.M.P’ at full volume.

Then - spoiler alert - Samuel is found dead in their front yard, apparently the victim of a terrible fall from that very attic. The question becomes, was the fall accidental, a suicide, or was he pushed by Sandra, the only other person in the near vicinity?

Cue a tense and thorny court drama, as Sandra’s life (and the life of her haunted young son, Daniel) are pulled apart viciously by France’s unconventional, fascinating legal system. ‘It felt really chaotic,’ laughs Hüller of the French court, which features extensive bickering and constant interruptions, far from the ‘I object!’ stateliness of the American court drama, ‘but we spoke extensively with lawyers and judges who said it really is that way.’

An immensely sharp, emotionally intelligent actor, Hüller’s presence at the forefront of this gripping legal drama has ensured her a high place on a number of Oscar prognosticators’ Best Actress frontrunner lists. Between Fall and Erdmann, a pattern seems to emerge in Hüller’s work, in which she often becomes something of an avatar for the independent, unapologetic and complex modern woman thrust into aggravating circumstances beyond her control. ‘A lot of women in my space struggle with perceptions from the outside, they have to constantly explain themselves or even apologise for the things they do. And [Sandra – the character] doesn’t do that, which I found really liberating. It doesn’t mean she’s cold-hearted, but to have the possibility to show her clarity, her compassion with her son, that’s something I felt was important.’

This is reflected in the journey of the film itself. Directed by Justine Triet, whose melodrama Sibyl Hüller previously appeared in, Anatomy of a Fall’s Palme D’Or prize marks only the third time this award has been given to a woman, following only Julia Ducournau’s Titane and our own Jane Campion’s The Piano. Toni Erdmann, meanwhile, was widely considered the deserving winner of the Palme in 2016, and was directed by German filmmaker Maren Ade. Within the European art world, Hüller has worked with some of the most important and exciting female directors of the day – not just Triet and Ade, but also Maria Schrader, Jessica Hausner and Alice Winocour. But being the muse of Europe’s triumphant women-led arthouse scene was a matter of right place, right time for Hüller: ‘I consider myself a feminist, so it’s of course important,’ she explains, ‘But I don’t choose a project because it’s a woman directing it. I’m lucky enough that these women have had some fantasy of me playing in their films so there’s some kind of connection there. If I feel the capacity to connect, that’s the thing. And maybe that’s more with women, but I don’t know.’

Sandra Hüller stars in Oscar-nominated Toni Erdmann.

Hüller’s start began in theatre, from a very young age. ‘The first time ever that I played something was at kindergarten, a Grimm’s fairy tale. Snow White. I was one of the dwarves,’ she laughs. It wasn’t until she was cast in exorcism drama Requiem in 2006 that she arrived on the screen. At the time, she was torn between theatre and film, quite literally: ‘I was still in theatre, so I had to go from playing shows at night to being on set in the morning. There was a lot of pressure. It was just crazy.’ That level of dedication perhaps speaks to Hüller’s work ethic, and why she is so sought after. ‘Once I decide to do something, I go all the way. I just do it, no matter what it takes - but that’s why the decision is so hard sometimes, because I really have to commit.’

That connection with Triet and Fall was forged in the film’s many questions, with the director never quite showing her hand as to whether or not Sandra was responsible for Samuel’s death. There’s plenty of fuel for the fire of either reading – guilty or not – and this contradiction was both exciting and challenging for Hüller. ‘I struggled with that question [of Sandra’s guilt] very much. Justine couldn’t answer it for me.’ Hüller explains of Fall’s intriguing dramatic setup. ‘I realised it’s not about that fact. Of course we are used to, as actors, knowing if our characters are guilty or innocent. But what was important is that in the eyes of the audience she is sometimes guilty and sometimes is not, and that is something that I have to serve.’

This was baked into the process of the film itself, where Triet would film multiple takes of a scene with a different inflection or suggestion of Sandra’s motives, in order to keep audiences on their toes, only choosing which take to go with in the editing room. ‘We made versions where she was very friendly, very vulnerable, very aggressive, very arrogant,’ Hüller explains, ‘When you’re on set you don’t know exactly which one is going to work. It’s a lot like theatre in that way, which makes the character very fun to play. It’s never boring.’

Those contradictions come to a head in Fall’s most acclaimed scene, an emotionally bruising war of words between Sandra and Samuel (played by Samuel Theis) where both spouses accuse, berate and cut the other with all the resentments and pains, petty and warranted, of a long, failing relationship. It’s only later Sandra discovers Samuel recorded the whole thing. The scene is remarkably precise in its depiction of the intricacies of long-term relationships, so much so that at times the dialogue feels improvised. ‘It was all scripted and I’m so thankful, because I could never invent such a thing,’ Hüller explains, ‘All the rhythm was in there, the dynamics were all Justine. We only had to find the placements in the room and follow the path she laid out for us. It was very obvious that I was witnessing a rare perfection. I was blown away by the accuracy of Justine’s writing.’

Beyond the quality of the script itself, Hüller makes the character entirely her own, crafting a performance that anchors us through many Hitchcockian twists and turns. Hüller has emphatically pushed back against claims from some critics that the character is ‘cold’, a shallow reading of a woman beset on all sides by suspicious minds. Being able to challenge that stereotype is part of what made Sandra so compelling to Hüller. ‘Just because someone doesn’t smile all the time or makes people feel comfortable doesn’t make them cold. It just means they have boundaries or more important things to do. I like that!’

And what of the ultimate question of Anatomy of a Fall – how much can we truly know someone? Does our ‘knowing’ someone blind us to the facets of the person they hide from the world? ‘I personally feel that people are capable of everything, one way or another,’ she says, after a long pause. ‘I myself can never fully understand a character. They will keep their secrets from me, just as people in real life will keep their secrets from me. And I don’t necessarily want to share all of myself with others too. We can never fully know someone. It’s the amount of trust in each other that connects us, not knowing everything.’

• Anatomy of a Fall is in cinemas October 12.