The Falling (15.)
Directed By Carol Morley.
Starring Maisie Williams, Florence Pugh, Maxine Peake, Anna Burnett, Monica Dolan and Greta Scacchi. 102 mins.
The Falling is a film about the thoughts and feelings of pubescent teenage girls and it does a fair job of emulating them – strange, passionate, inexplicable and muddled. Watching it you feel like you've gained admittance to a secret, intimate world. But once the initial thrill of admittance has subsided, your attention may begin to wander.
It is 1969 and in a provincial girls' school two pupils, Abbie (Pugh) and Lydia (Williams) have a deep and unusually close friendship. But after an unexpected shocking event – the film company has asked us to avoid specifying what this is exactly – Lydia finds herself at the centre of a form of hysteria that sweeps through the school and produces a wave of fainting, while the school teachers try to clamp down on it and work out what is happening.
Director Carol Morley is known for her Dream Of A Life, a haunting speculation on the life of a woman who lay dead in a flat in Wood Green for three years. That was more multimedia art project than standard documentary and her feature debut merges the elusive mysteries of Picnic At Hanging Rock with the hysteria of Ken Russell's The Devils. It looks lovely and Morley fills it with enticing ambiguities, employing faux subliminal edits (if they were really subliminal you wouldn't notice them) to hint at what lies beyond the inexplicable occurrences. The performances are good, the film looks tremendous and, in theory, it has a beautifully evocative atmosphere. It should be a little classic but it is just so self contained and insular, so enrapt in its own specialness, it glides pass you without ever really peaking your interest.
The Falling (15.)
Directed By Carol Morley.
Starring Maisie Williams, Florence Pugh, Maxine Peake, Anna Burnett, Monica Dolan and Greta Scacchi. 102 mins.
The Falling is a film about the thoughts and feelings of pubescent teenage girls and it does a fair job of emulating them – strange, passionate, inexplicable and muddled. Watching it you feel like you've gained admittance to a secret, intimate world. But once the initial thrill of admittance has subsided, your attention may begin to wander.
It is 1969 and in a provincial girls' school two pupils, Abbie (Pugh) and Lydia (Williams) have a deep and unusually close friendship. But after an unexpected shocking event – the film company has asked us to avoid specifying what this is exactly – Lydia finds herself at the centre of a form of hysteria that sweeps through the school and produces a wave of fainting, while the school teachers try to clamp down on it and work out what is happening.
Director Carol Morley is known for her Dream Of A Life, a haunting speculation on the life of a woman who lay dead in a flat in Wood Green for three years. That was more multimedia art project than standard documentary and her feature debut merges the elusive mysteries of Picnic At Hanging Rock with the hysteria of Ken Russell's The Devils. It looks lovely and Morley fills it with enticing ambiguities, employing faux subliminal edits (if they were really subliminal you wouldn't notice them) to hint at what lies beyond the inexplicable occurrences. The performances are good, the film looks tremendous and, in theory, it has a beautifully evocative atmosphere. It should be a little classic but it is just so self contained and insular, so enrapt in its own specialness, it glides pass you without ever really peaking your interest.
