In a remote mountain chalet in the French Alps, Sandra (Sandra Huller), a successful novelist, is being interviewed by a student. Upstairs her husband Samuel (Samuel Thjeis) is playing his music so loud that she has to call off the taped interview. Shortly afterward, Samuel is found dead in the snow below the open window of his office. Did he accidentally fall? Did he commit suicide? Or was he pushed?
Sandra immediately comes under suspicion for murder. Claiming she is innocent, she contacts an old lawyer friend, Vincent (Swann Arlaud), to defend her in court. During those proceedings, Samuel and Sandra’s visually impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) is called to testify about whether he heard his parents fighting before the fall. Samuel had a head wound, and a blood splatter on the shed below the window seems to establish he was pushed. But Sandra recalls that months earlier she had suspected he attempted suicide with an aspirin overdose.
A turning point in the trial – and in the movie’s focus -- comes with the introduction of an audio tape of a fight between Samuel and Sandra the night before his death. It includes sounds of violence. It also reveals some deep conflicts between the couple. She has been unhappy in the relationship and had an affair with a woman. He accuses her of plagiarism and resents that she is more successful. He also asserts that she controls his life.
The courtroom proceedings keep us guessing to the end, one of the few times we can remember when the guilt or innocence of the accused was not firmly established. But the real revelations of the story have to do with what we learn about Sandra and Samuel’s marriage. The “fall” had already happened long ago. Its questions about the impact of career competition, sexual orientation, infidelity, resentment, and lack of self-esteem are the real mysteries here.