Justine Triet and Arthur Harari recalled how very different their lives were a few years ago, stuck at home in the midst of Covid, when they first started to write.
“This is a crazy year, in contrast with what it started out as, before. Stuck in the house with two kids. It was lockdown, and we hooked them up to cartoons to have peace. And there was no line, I think, between work and diapers,” said an emotional Triet.
Then, said co-writer Arthur Harari, “the producers came along, and that’s when things got a little crazy.”
“This will help me through my midlife crisis I think,” said Triet, as the couple accepted the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Triet is also a nominated director.
The film stars Sandra Huller as a woman accused of killing her husband at their home in the French Alps. An aspiring writer and occasional professor, he falls from a window several stories up and the autopsy results are inconsistent. A misogynistic prosecutor scours through the couple’s complicated private life and heaps judgment after judgement on Sandra (also the name of Huller’s character), even playing in court a recording of a painful fight the couple had before he died,
Swann Arlaud stars as Sandra’s committed defense lawyer Vincent. Antoine Reinartz plays, in Triet’s words, “the nastiest prosecutor of the year.”
Milo Machado Graner is splendid as Sandra’s visually impaired young son Daniel, the soul of the film, a role shared by his faithful dog Messi – seated tonight with the cast. Host Jimmy Kimmel even gave a shoutout to the pup’s dramatic overdose scene where he fell sick after eating vomit with pills in it (he recovered).
This was a competitive race. Plenty of voters were rooting for The Holdovers, written by David Hemingson, and Celine Song’s beloved Past Lives.
