The Falling

The Falling from director Carol Morley was our film pick of the week. ★★★★★

Carol Morley's The Falling explores a mysterious fainting epidemic in a rural British girls' school in 1969. Part black comedy, part surreal psychodrama, this strikingly English, understated drama will hold you to the edge of your seat as it teeters on the brink of the supernatural.

The Falling: film plot

The Falling: film plot

Sixteen-year old best friends Lydia and Abbie are on the cusp of adulthood. As they struggle to come to grips with the changes they are going through, and to address their increasingly complex emotions, a fainting and twitching outbreak is simultaneously spreading thoughout the school. As the adults attempt to figure out whether this is pretense, mass psychogenic illness or something more sinister, their grip on reality falters and the atmosphere in the school becomes disturbingly tense: and Lydia (played by Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams) comes to discover the alarming truth behind her own identity.

Director Carol Morley

Hauntingly beautiful and stunningly shot, The Falling features a punchy prog-rock soundtrack from Tracey Thorn (Everything but the Girl) and cinematography as luxurious as a pre-Raphaelite painting from Agnès Godard (Beau Travail). The imaginative script from Carol Morley – director of documentary Dreams of a Life – shows her first attempt at directing a drama and brings poetry to the banality of daily life in 1960s England.

The Falling: film cast

A knife-edge insight into desire, sexuality and innocence The Falling constantly wavers between the supernatural and the frighteningly human. Also starring newcomer Florence Pugh and the award-winning Maxine Peake, The Falling is a brilliantly sharp and entrancing exploration into loneliness, adolescence and identity.

You can watch The Falling online on iTunes.