In director Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, it doesn’t matter if a crime has been committed. I suppose there are moviegoers who would disagree with that assertion. After being conditioned by a host of heated courtroom thrillers where a shock twist ending is basically the point of the whole endeavor, they might find the resolute ambiguity of Triet’s storytelling to be frustrating or even an act of mild betrayal. The film portrays a legal case leveled against renowned author Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) after her husband (Samuel Theis) dies after plummeting from an attic window in their mountain home. The authorities decide that she must have committed murder and rifle through the details of the couple’s shared life to assemble commonplace marital conflicts into what they believe is a damning portrait. The plentiful scenes of the French trial show a vicious, bruising proceeding that is bound to leave emotional wounds regardless of whether guilty or innocence is the determination. Triet is precise and focused in the narrative construction of the film (she is co-credited on the screenplay with Arthur Harari). Her clarity of purpose is made yet more riveting by the splendid, emotionally resonant performances, especially by Hüller and, as the couple’s visually impaired son, Milo Machado-Graner. There is resolution to the story (Triet’s staging when revealing the verdict of the court case is one of the best, slyest moments in the film) and a little sense of how these lives will go on. To me, though, the most notable aspect of Anatomy of a Fall is its aching sense that some truths are slippery and some are unknowable. No matter how intricately a person, a relationship, a life, or a mystery is examined, it can still stand apart from craved certainty.