I must first point out before proceeding with this review my experiences of Carol Morley’s past work can only be described as frustrating at best. I don’t like Dreams of a Life. A fascinating story about the unfortunate, lonely end of a young vivacious woman Joyce Carol Vincent, who body laid undiscovered for three years in a London flat; what is supposed to be an eerie documentary about isolation and lonliness that plays on the fear every human has instead becomes a bloated piece composed of irrelevant talking head speculation that’s then padded out with plodding, meaningless ‘dreamlike’ reconstruction sequences. I would recommend Morley’s Guardian article about Vincent over her documentary any day:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/oct/09/joyce-vincent-death-mystery-documentary

When THE FALLING first appeared on the film-going radar it was back in October 2014 (London Film Festival to be exact) and hearing what the film was about, one couldn’t help but tip one’s hat at Morley’s ability to find a good story. This time round shaping a fictional narrative that explores the history of female mass hysterical outbreaks, with particular influence of a notorious outbreak in Blackburn in the mid-60s. I was intrigued the most recent incident had been reported last year in the United States, where a group of high school girl friends had all developed Tourette’s like twitching. I had also recently seen a performance of The Crucible at the Old Vic about the Salem witch hunts of the 17th century; often viewed as the prototype or traditional opinion of female displaced sexuality as an explanation for mass hysterical outbreaks.

With the case of The Falling, it appears that Morley offers another explanation of mass hysteria suggesting it’s not always about inhibited female sexuality but also female creativity yearning to be expressed in a world that encourages to suppress such desires. While I commend Morley for arguing against the male perspective of girl/womanhood in that sense, just like Dreams of a Life, the story excites but the execution disappoints.

The dreamlike world of Dreams, I thought would travel well for the fictional, insular world in which The Falling exists. Other, more favorable reviews of The Falling compare it to the likes of Don’t Look Now, Berberian Sound Studio (and more recently The Duke of Burgundy) and in terms of exploring the intensity of female relationships – Heavenly Creatures. These rather excellent films all share a particular style. They are worlds that resemble reality but seem other worldly in their intensive peculiarities and insular existence. These films are all about the potent feel translated either in aesthetic, script, mood and in every single one of these examples an intense dream sequence that describes the entire consciousness of the film. The Falling tries for this but I’m not convinced of it’s success, especially compared to these sister films.

The Falling simply doesn’t have the richness of depth of say Don’t Look Now. The editing seems rather erratic, making the film seem disjointed with important parts of the stories or sequences seemingly absent. The result of this, is that the intensity of relationships, particularly between Maisie Williams’ Lydia and best friend and catalyst to the epidemic that is soon come, Abbie (played by newcomer Florence Pugh), plays like a rather run-of-the-mill case of one friend being in love with another. It’s all very Single White Female but without any of the tension (pulp or otherwise). The world building integral to the rest of the narrative is quickly established  but with rudimentary panache.

Abbie, Lydia and co and their handsome surroundings seem oddly superficial and coldly abstract and not interesting enough to be explored. This posed a problem for the rest of the film as the potency of their relationship is lacking from the start thus making the rest of the film baffling in its earnest intensity. The film’s passion rings hollow quite early on. By the third act, it seems that Morley feels the same way as the central narrative is sidelined for unnecessary kitchen sink plot lines that attempt to be revelatory but are just incredulous and laughable.  I wasn’t convinced that Lydia and Abbie’s relationship was that intense to have caused such a catastrophe of events. But then again some of the central characters – Abbie in particular – weren’t convincing from the off.

Central to the heart of the film is the relationship between Abbie and Lydia. They are captains one and two in a band of school girls and are best friends with Abbie being the ‘coventionally prettier’ (READ: blonde) and sexually active of the two. Its the latter part of Abbie’s character that brings trouble to their friendship and their lives as Abbie enjoys unprotected sex with a number of older boys including Lydia’s older brother (who has a creepy interest in underage girls, that the film doesn’t really acknowledge as wrong. It was another time I guess) and as a result becomes pregnant. This seemingly charismatic personality has a sort of magnetic effect on those around her as Abbie starts to feel strange, manifesting in fainting spells, marks (of self harm maybe) and twitches, which sympathetically Lydia starts to also show, then spreading to their inner circle and beyond.

If the story’s to work, there would have to be something undeniable about Abbie that justifies everyone’s reaction to her. Continually described as a “Warrior Princess”, able to enrapture an audience by reciting some Wordsworth and just generally being adored, my reaction of the reaction to Abbie was complete bafflement. There was nothing compelling or particularly memorable about Abbie. The finger can be pointed at a number of things: the acting for one. Florence Pugh is simply okay but she’s neither confident, nor has enough presence or charisma to fulfill such demands that role asks. Maisie Williams had much more force and personality (because of her experience perhaps) that it genuinely became confusing as to why her character would idolize such a nothing person. But the blame can not be solely placed on Pugh who as mentioned previously was never bad just servicable. Blame also has to go to editing, their relationship and foundations to the rest of the story are rushed. Everything seems mechanical and meticulous rather than with the heart and emotion that the subject matter deserves.

But the character of Abbie is treated the same as everybody else in the film. There was something remote about all the characters. So detached were the population on screen I was unable to have any kind of connection or emotion with anyone. I did get a few laughs from the actions of and reaction to Monica Dolan’s chain-smoking headmistress, which demonstrates the dry wit  capabilities that Morley has but other than that the laughs tended to be unintentional and mainly at the expense of the film rather than with the film.

To a certain degree, I felt a disconnect to the script. These school girls, fifteen years of age, all spoke like they were the 1960s version of Dawson Creek. Literature and thesaurus saturated, they communicated in ways meant to be poetic but instead felt unbelievable and hollow and like the whole mood of the film, deeply removed. I think that since An Education I’ve really fallen out of favour with precocious youth speak. Much has also been said about the soundtrack that should have cemented the time of the film (1969) with its prog-rock sensibility. I wasn’t convinced. Sometimes I found it jarringly overbearing other times it reminded me of on-the-nose soundtrack of reality TV shows. But that might be me being overly cruel as I really wasn’t having a good time at all.

You can probably tell at this point that I didn’t take too well to the film. Things took a further turn for the worse by the third act. The generally rushed opening quickly gave way to a turgid middle that was repetitive and snail paced as we watched the many ways in which the actors had learnt how to ‘faint’ without hurting themselves. Save for a couple of scenes (again with Maisie Williams who quickly became the saving grace of the film) of Lydia’s enforced isolation from her friends and her fractured and angry interaction with her agoraphobic mother played by Maxine Peake, the old familiar feelings of frustration that I had felt with Dreams of a Life returned with full force.

Before being introduced to a ridiculous final act that introduces rape and incest (sigh. I won’t even go in to how hopeless the ending was because I’d have to relive the absolute apathy I felt by the film’s end) the audience have to endure a festival-like massive nervous collapse as the girls all faint in assembly. Well they faint and then writhe about and crowd surf like they’re at Woodstock or something. I know in the back of my mind it’s supposed to represent the frightening nature of the unexplained. You can see the look of shock and horror of those not affected. Things are always more scary when they can’t be explained but the execution of it made me dismiss it as it being a (rather radical) practical joke where someone’s spiked the water with acid or something. By then my reaction to the film was exasperation and immense boredom.

It seems that Morley has done it again. A story of subject that is so essentially, exquisitely human has been found but the storytelling techniques employed has stripped it of heart and life and reduced it to something horrifying – a boring film.

If you want to see The Falling to either agree of disagree with this review, it’s still on limited release in cinemas.