The Falling was a drama written and directed by Carol Morley and notable for giving many young British actors their first major roles.
Lydia (Maisie Williams) and Abigail (Florence Pugh) are best friends and attend an all-girls school in 1960s England. Abigail is more sexually experienced, leading her to become pregnant. When a tragedy strikes the school experiences an outbreak of mass fainting, leading to the school authorities trying to figure out what’s happening.
The Falling premiered at the 2014 London Film Festival and it was met with mixed reviews. Some critics were positive, like Peter Bradshaw, Mark Kermode, and Kate Muir, whilst Little White Lies and Shiznit.co.uk were much more critical. I stand with the latter interpretation since The Falling was a slog to sit through.
The Falling was a mishmash of ideas. It was three different stories that were stapled together. It seemed like it was going to be a coming-of-age story where a girl was going to learn about womanhood from their more experienced friend. Then it turned into a mystery about the outbreak of mass fainting. Finally, it turned into a story about the mother and daughter clashing. What was the story? What was the narrative flow?
The Falling did start off with promise as it showed what some girls got up to when in private. This included a girl forcing herself to throw up, whilst another pleasured herself. It gave the audience a sense of the issues these girls were experiencing and it was happening at a time when there was less understanding. The film did have certain throughlines like establishing the relationship between Lydia and her mother (Maxine Peake) which was tense with Lydia becoming passively aggressive towards her. This throughline was jumbled with the messy second act.
The film loses a lot of momentum when it goes from exploring the girls and the relationship between Lydia and Abigail to the mass fainting story. The turning point was when Abigail dies at the end of the first act. The fainting story was not interesting, and it should have been. It didn’t help that the same insipid song played every time when the girls started to faint. It got tedious.
The relationship between Lydia and her brother, Kenneth (Joe Cole) had creepy overtones. They became closer to each other because they saw each other as a way to keep their connection with Abigail. Lydia was Abigail’s friend, whilst Kenneth had sex with Abigail. My skin crawled when they spoke about Abigail, and to my dismay, it went in the direction I thought it would go.
The most interesting aspect of The Falling was the cast. It featured a cast of young talent who went on to have excellent careers. There was Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders, A Prayer Before Dawn), Moryfdd Clark (Saint Maud, The Ring of Power), and most importantly, Florence Pugh. The Falling was Pugh’s first role in a feature film and even in this early role she had a commanding presence. It was needed since her character dies in the first 30 minutes, yet the characters were still thinking about her.
The Falling had interesting ideas but it was told in a muddled way and resulted in a dull film for most audiences. At best it’s a curiosity for fans of Pugh and the other actors involved.
