The Falling
Tags: insanity

Plot synopsis:
Set in 1969 in a rural British girls school, []The Falling [/i] explores what lies behind a mysterious fainting and twitching outbreak that rapidly spreads amongst the pupils. At the centre of the epidemic are intense and clever Lydia Lamont (Maisie Williams) and admired and rebellious Abbie Mortimer (Florence Pugh), both sixteen years old. They carve their initials into a majestic English oak tree, which leans over a magical pond, and vow never to lose touch. But Lydia already feels that Abbie is drifting away from her and soon her fears are confirmed.A gang of committed friends including prefect Susan (Anna Burnett), who longs to be Abbie, and skeptical Titch (Rose Caton) who remains unaffected by the fainting, surround Lydia. But none of them can take Abbie's place. Only her older brother, loner, occult-follower and ley-line believer Kenneth (Joe Cole), is able to provide some solace. When the sympathetic young art teacher Miss Charron (Morfydd Clark) tries to reach out to Lydia, she herself becomes caught up in the fainting epidemic.Within the volatile, strange atmosphere of the school and her troubled home-life, Lydia feels driven to discover what is really behind everything that seems wrong. As the fainting escalates Lydia confronts the authority figures around her: her mother, self absorbed home hairdresser Eileen (Maxine Peake), the unbending and indomitable deputy head Miss Mantel (Greta Scacchi), and the enigmatic and powerful headmistress Miss Alvaro (Mónica Dolan). Eventually Lydia's actions force old secrets to rise to the surface and she finds herself faced with a truth that she never expected.___A children's song is heard in a deserted luxurious forest. A girl remembers somebody making love in a car.Cut to a school, where Abigail "Abbie" Mortimer (Florence Pugh) feels bad. Miss Mantel (Greta Scacchi) checks the length of her skirt and the red marks in her body. At the science classroom, an attractive male teacher (Guy Morris) says that an egg is a cell and explains why sometimes there is blood on it.They are painting in the wet forest a rainy day. Lydia Lamont (Maisie Williams) caresses Abbie's hair. They carve their initials into a majestic English oak tree.The teachers smoke, even in the classroom! Abbie is reciting a poem. Weird loose scenes linked by the music and chorus of girls play. One of the girls throws up. Lydia's mother, called Eileen (Maxine Peake) is dying a customer (Louise Tomlinson)'s hair and Lydia throws the dye to the floor.Abbie is pregnant. She thinks that it can't be, because the boy withdrew early. Abbie laughs it off. Back home, Kenneth (Joe Cole) - who is Lydia's brother- interrupts Lydia and Abbie discussing how to have an abortion with a needle. Kenneth takes Lydia and Abbie dancing, but he is only interested in Abbie, who makes love to him, while Lydia, still a virgin, reads in a cupboard in another room. Abbie says to upset Lydia that sex with Kenneth doesn't mean anything, and mentions "free love".Abbie and Lydia are sent to detention the following day because they are late for class. Mantel speaks to Abbie, and she throws up at her feet. Abbie is not hungry, so Janet eats her dessert and realises that Abbie is pregnant because Abbie thinks it tastes metallic, as did Janet's mum when she was pregnant. Abbie faints in the middle of the dining room. Lydia insists to Abbie that she must sell the baby and not kill it. Abbie faints again and bleeds through the nose.Miss Mantel tells Lydia to call an ambulance. Lydia thinks that she is losing her baby.Lydia is distraught that Abbie is dead. Eileen doesn't seem bothered and turns the TV volume up so as not to hear Lydia's rhythmic thumping on furniture.The headmistress rehearses her speech. A poetry prize is created in Abbie's name. Lydia stares at nothing.Lydia, Susan, Titch (Rose Caton), Gwen (Lauren McCrostie), Connie (Katie Ann Knight) and Janet (Evie Hooton) keep on playing within the alternative orchestra that Abbie had started up.Lydia comes to Miss Mantel's classroom late and "dances" until she faints.Eileen has her salon at home because she doesn't want to leave home. Titch's watch has stopped. At that moment, in the middle of the classroom of art, Lydia faints and falls. Another girl faints. The art teacher looks startled. The next fainter is Gwen.Teachers think it's just neurosis and showing off. Lydia takes Susan home and Kenneth smiles at her.The art teacher is the next one who falls, and then, Lydia again.Kenneth believes in magic, but Lydia doesn't. She kneels down in the middle of the school corridor, but nobody pays attention to her. This seems to cause a tic in her eye.Instances and instances of fainting, even in groups of two. The art teacher hugs Lydia and Lydia tries to caress her face. When the art teacher rejects her, Lydia faints and the teacher doesn't go to her. The teacher also rejects Mr. Hopkins (Mathew Baynton)'s advances.The headmistress, Miss Alvaro (Monica Dolan), offers Lydia time off school for a while. When Lydia refuses, she wants to see her mother, but she won't go. Lydia faints and this time, it looks like she has hurt herself. Eileen keeps on smoking and doesn't do anything. Kenneth thinks that Lydia is like that because of something that she has done.A lady comes to speak about accidents at the home. Lydia is excluded from this so she kicks the door while her eye twitches; Many girls get up and faint, even the art teacher. There are images they see in their heads. The art teacher has a fit as well. Lydia stares at all the girls "dancing" and fainting. Miss Fanshawe (Elizabeth Marsh), Alvaro and the rest stare puzzled.Girls are panicking at hospital. Only Titch is immune.Mantel realises that the art teacher is pregnant, and she admits that she had a child. She remembers her bloodied hands during an abortion.Lydia and Gwen speak to a psychologist.Lydia thinks that there has to be a real illness, but doctors think that it's 'hysterical contagion'. Lydia is expelled when she returns home.Finally, Eileen admits that she was raped, and that was when she got pregnant with Lydia. Lydia leaves saying that she is glad to know. She goes to the forest: she feels that the full moon is speaking to her. As she feels that Abbie is calling her, she screams Abbie's name. She climbs the oak with their names scratched. She laughs hysterically.Smoking, Eileen enters the forest, having nightmares about her rape. Lydia is about to jump.Lydia jumps into the river shouting "Abbiiiiie". Her mother wades in and hugs her body. Lydia dreams with Abbie. Lydia wakes up.Eileen and Lydia hug in the middle of the river.

Review: Set in a 1969 girls school, when the promiscuous student Abbie, played by Florence Pugh, accidentally gets pregnant, she begins to suffer from fits of fainting seemingly at random.
Her best friend Lydia, played by Williams, deals with the consequences after the epidemic spreads across the school with girls fainting out of control.
The film appears to be a story about the friendship between Lydia and Abbie, but it fractures off into different directions, some more engaging than others.
Her relationship with her agoraphobic mother, played by Maxine Peake, is a key aspect of the film and one of the few things that eventually pay off in a satisfying way, if a disturbing one.
Carol Morley's second feature achieves something rather spectacular, given that it's one of those indolent period pieces featuring two drastically different girlhood friends in Britain, circa 1969, both attending a strict repressive girl's school.It's notable in that, while containing no one action that sets the screen ablaze, it manages to keep you mesmerized for virtually its entire run-time.
The themes of the story and the shooting style bear favorable, heavy influence from both Peter Weir's gorgeous Aussie fever-dream "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and Lindsey Anderson's prep-school-in-revolt landmark "If....".It also helps to have two young actresses of the astonishing caliber of Maisie Williams and Florence Pugh to play the lead roles.
Add to that a career-making turn by Maxine Peake as Lydia's agoraphobic, terminally-depressed mother and you have a film that enraptures more by what it doesn't tell you, than what it does..
In 1969, Lydia (Maisie Williams) and Abbie (Florence Pugh) are two best friends at an English girls' school, but their peace is shattered when Lydia is taken over by a mysterious illness.
As the illness spreads throughout the school, it begins to take its toll and tear the tight-knit group apart, and the cause of it seems to lie deeper in the minds of the girls than anyone could ever have expected.Williams and Pugh are enchanting as Lydia and Abbie, and the supporting cast, including Greta Scacchi and Monica Dolan, give the film a perfectly executed sense of perception.
Peake, too, gives an astounding performance, stealing the scene with every word she utters.Carol Morley's direction creates a lingering uneasiness about the film, which contrasts eerily with the stunning landscape of the English countryside.
The story is layered with intertwining details that increase the enigmatic charm of it without crossing the fine line into pretentious melodrama.Despite, at times, being directionally unclear, the film's dream- like quality brings all of the elements of the production together to form a visually stimulating mystery drama.
THE FALLING is a film detailing an outbreak of fainting at an all-girl school in 1969.
I previously saw director Carol Morley's docu-drama DREAMS OF A LIFE and that was a similar film in that it had an interesting premise but sub-standard execution.
I think I'm going to give up on 'British film' altogether because I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of decent British movies I've seen in the last ten years.
Set in the 1960s at an all girl school we meet Lydia (Masie Williams) who has a best friend in Abbie.
It tells the story about a student named Lydia whom has been raised by her mother named Eileen who in every sense of the word lives inside and whom whilst studying at a girls school in England where skirts should be no more than two inches from the ground when kneeling, starts experiencing unintentional and intangible mental states which gradually turns into physical symptoms.Distinctly and precisely directed by English filmmaker Carol Morley, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints though mostly from the main character's point of view, draws a diversely re-educating portrayal of what happens to an adolescent daughter who sometimes blinks with her right eye and some of her fellow students after her friend named Abigail finds herself in a situation.
I mean I didn't castrate women, Freud did." thirty-four years after women's rights activists made a day for a state of peace, thirty-two years after Englanders sang: " Don't help them to bury the  Don't give in " and eight years after an English-Jewish revolutionary feminist and member of the English Women's Liberation Movement named Linda Bellos received the OBE for services to diversity, depicts an authentic study of character and contains a great and timely instrumental score by composer Tracey Thorn.This perspicacious mystery which is set in England in the late 1960s a decade before the first Aldermaston march and during the decade when an English typist named Myra Hindley (1942-2002) was sentenced to life imprisonment and taken to the HM Holloway Prison in Islington, London, England and where a peaceful existence becomes a rationally spiritual transition into conscience, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, rhythmic continuity, masterful screenplay, fragmented flashback scenes, interesting cinematic reference, scene where Lydia is questioned by a psychiatrist and the eminent acting performances by English actress Maise Williams, Australian actress Greta Scacchi and English actress Maxine Peake.
STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning In the late 60s, at an all girls school with a strict stance on discipline, straight laced Lydia (Maisie Williams) and her promiscuous mate Abbie (Florence Pugh) are going through the trials and tribulations of school life.
When Abbie falls pregnant, and then tragedy strikes, a mysterious fainting spell strikes the girls at the school and then to others, leading to a mysterious ritual in the forest.This unusual offering appeared out of nowhere in a few theatres last April, an out the way offering with a mysterious allure about it.
A lot of opinion seems to be divided, but for me, Carol Morley's blend of horror and drama is a promise that doesn't pay off, with an impressive, quiet sense of atmosphere about it, but an incomprehensible story that's impossible to get in to.Something about it's eerie nature keeps you with it to the end, but with such a flimsily established story and characters you end up unable to really feel for, the end result is not as great as hoped.
The plot centers on the friendship between troubled, stressed Lydia (Maisie Williams of Game of Thrones) and golden girl Abbie (Florence Pugh).
4) The relationship between Lydia and her agoraphobic mom simmers near the boiling point for much of the film, erupts once, and then is halfheartedly explained away.Watch this movie (at your own peril) and see if you can figure out why everyone's fainting, or even if they in fact really are.
Maisie Williams is a good actress but the film is slow moving and almost nothing really happens other than closed minded people not wanting to talk about the realities of life.That being said, there is an actually problem and it's not with the film itself but rather with those that have watched it and how clueless the conclusions seem to be.
If anything, I'm much more confused.The film focuses on schoolgirl Lydia's (Maisie Williams) almost obsessive, lesbianist relationship with Abbie (Florence Pugh), a fellow student, who falls ill after having slept with Lydia's brother.
Meanwhile, Lydia's agoraphobic mother (Maxine Peake) remains disturbingly unresponsive to her daughter's behaviour until the film's final moments.Throughout, the film raises several questions, like 'what's causing this epidemic?', 'why is Lydia so deranged?' and 'why is Lydia's mother afraid to leave the house?' But the biggest question on my mind whilst watching the film was 'what's the point in this tripe?' As you can probably tell, this is one of those pretentious, moralistic and metaphorical films that is supposed to maintain some kind of underlying meaning or social commentary.
It's controversial for the sake of being controversial; pure garbage.As some other reviewers here have already noted, the acting and cinematography are mostly of a high standard; Maxine Peake is no less than outstanding in her role, making her the film's only truly convincing character.
Maisie Williams is extraordinary in the lead role as a band of school girls fall foul of an epidemic that causes them to faint.
With no sign of any other health issues, the school teachers and parents are lead to believe this could all be a hoax at the hands of the attention seeking Lydia (Williams) who's close clique friends fall victim first.There are undertones of something much more sinister than a coming of age tale in 60's England and after several observations it's still not clear as the reason why the children have these episodes.
The ambiguity behind the happenings is only part of the story as there's complex teachers, a home relationship between Lydia and her mother (Maxine Peake) on the brink of collapse and the death of close friend Abbie (Florence Pugh) all culminating in a spiral of madness for a young girl struggling to balance popularity and victimisation.The relationship between Williams and Pugh, is mesmerising to watch and to learn that it has an end only adds to the heartache growing inside William's character.
At its heart, this is Lydia's story but is as much about the effects of those around her as the mystery behind the girls behaviour spreads.Whether Morley's undertones of witchcraft are purposeful or accidental, 'The Falling' is a bewitching tale that is a slow build up to very little.
Set in a small all-girl school in 1969, this film is centred on pupil Lydia Lamont who is virtually inseparable from her best friend Abbie Mortimer.
While this is going on Lydia starts to explore her own sexuality and ultimately learns why her mother hasn't left the house for sixteen years.After hearing some very positive reviews I was a little surprised to see the film's low score and poor reviews here having seen the film I was less surprised.
Clearly they had struggled in the edit to make the story work from the scenes they had shot, and used ever GCSE film making cliché from 'flash frames' to cut away to shagging that I would expect 1st year students to use in 1972.
Yet critics are saying it is brilliant "A new Auteur." I think critic's lack of understanding of how a film is actually constructed, made and shot, leads them to see things that a real film maker would just say, "oh they have cut to that shot because they've lost focus on that shot, or the eye line is off, or they haven't got enough coverage, or this shot is dead."The premise was so good, the concept sound, but the execution was truly dreadful the director/writer clearly did not know what to do with the source material and drew no conclusions and no interesting plot lines and the bit about incest was just terrible.
Purely based on the title, and the knowledge that the setting is an austere girls' school in 1967, you'd be forgiven for assuming Carol Morley's The Falling would probably centre simply around the classic teenage angst of someone 'falling' for someone else – a sweet tale of a girl being smitten with another girl perhaps, given the film's pride of place in the opening weekend of the BFI Flare Festival – and the love being inevitably unrequited.
As much as the film's introduction of this little-publicised phenomenon makes you want to delve into the nearest history book and learn more, it deliberately avoids the temptation to be reassuringly documentative or even conform to a specific genre (are we meant to laugh of feel scared?), instead drawing us into a heady, complex and utterly bewildering fog of its characters' fear, rage, innocence and desire, told in a disarmingly abstract and unique way which – complete with stunning canvas-like cinematography by Agnes Goddard and a gorgeously jittery, surreal score by Tracey Thorn – transcends the film into another realm of artistry.It is a challenging coming-of-age role for Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams, who finally has the opportunity to embrace something far more substantial than tomboy-with-sword.
Having watched the trailer this looked like a very interesting movie.I was also a big fan of the directors previous work, Dreams of a Life.What starts out as a coming of age movie turns into a complete farce with some of the most cringe worthy scenes i've seen in recent years.
Grieving over Abbie's death,Lydia starts to explore the power from her mysterious fainting,as the fainting spell spreads across the entire school.View on the film:Backed by a shimmering acoustic indie score from Tracey Thorn,writer/director Carol Morley & cinematographer Agnès Godard give the film (produced by Luc "son of Nic" Roeg) a lush supernatural green which is rubbed up against the rising damp of the late '60s.Splicing subliminal images into the title, Morley touches on the supernatural with a real delicacy,as light greens and deep river blues surrounding the girls gives the fainting spell a magical, rustic quality,which also subtly connects to the loss of childhood for Lydia.As a fainting epidemic covers the school,Morley keeps Lydia's home life firmly grounded,with each room being covered in dour wallpaper and thick clouds of cigarette smoke,which Lydia tries to escape from by curling up in claustrophobic corners of the rooms.Staying away from overtly stepping into Horror territory,Morley brilliantly uses the supernatural element in the screenplay to give the movie a deeply unsettling atmosphere,thanks to the mass fainting heightening the grief that Lydia is gripped by,which slowly covers the school in a psychologically horrific mass hysteria.For the central relationship between Lydia & Abbie,Morley entwines the girls in a fragile,obsessive bond,as Abbie's exploration of her sexuality presses down on Lydia's fear of loneliness.Cast adrift by the loss of Abbie, (played by a superb Florence Pugh) Morley makes the tough rules of Lydia's (played by a powerfully raw Maisie Williams) school open up the raw nerves of Lydia's grief,thanks to the closed emotions sending Lydia's fear and terror across the school like a magik myth,whose spell is cast in a hauntingly ambiguous final note by Morley,as the school falls into the falling..
The plot of this film revolves incidents of pupils fainting at an all girls school in the 1960s.
Some may say this is because I am male and didn't go to a boys/girls only school but I feel that is a cheap excuse, I have enjoyed many films where I have never had the same experiences as the main character.
Here, it's at its most intense, with some of the the most visceral subliminal imagery I've seen since Friedkin's Captain Howdy made an appearance to Father Merrin.My interpretation of the film, however wrong I may be, is that it's about sexual awakening, repression and oppression, after all, Abbie's explanation of an orgasm is pretty much the same as the symptoms the girls are having when they 'fall'.The intense look of ecstasy they have on their faces as they fall, is somewhat disturbing, and as the 'fallings' become a more regular occurrence at the school, Morley injects some quite surprising humour into the proceedings.What is wonderful though about the film is that the reasoning is never clearly explained in the narrative.
Revelations and actions in the final fifteen minutes of the film are truly heartbreaking, and this is also thanks to a wonderful turn from Maxine Peake as Lydia's agoraphobic, mentally unstable mother, nearly stealing the film from Williams.With elements and references from several movies, most noticeably Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Innocents, and The Wicker Man, The Falling is a wonderful gem that needs to be seemed out as soon as you can.It's a sublime psychedelic experience about coming to terms with major changes in life, with a devilishly black streak running through it.One of the years best movies..
The director, in a Q&A after the film, explained that the incest scene was the girl trying to connect with her brothers previous sexual partner (her best friend).
this film I have to say really let me down because when I first saw the cover I have to say I thought it was about witches but its really about too girls who are best friends one called abbie and the other called lydia and abbie falls pregnant and dies from the sickness and the lydia is left to live her live missable and and it gets so bad she sleeps with her own brother to know what sex feels like, and all the girls and her start fainting round the school and even the art teacher faints and takes fits in the middle of assembly and they have to sack her and lydia always thought her dad ran away because he didn't love her mum anymore but the real reason was because her dad was a rapist and raped her mum and thats why her mum couldn't talk to her during the whole film until she catches lydia having sex with her brother and what lydia says is "I forgot he was my brother" i do not recommend this movie to anyone it was soooo boring.
Lydia responds to her expulsion by beginning an incestuous relationship with her brother Kenneth, but the reason why she reacts in this way remains as mysterious as everything else in this film.Marlow's first mistake is to kill Abbie off so early on, as Florence Pugh makes her about the only interesting character in the film.
All three have a general air of mystery about them, and "The Falling" shares with Weir's film the theme of intense, possibly sexual, friendships between pupils at a girls' school.
With the director's previous film (Dreams of a Life) I had liked what it did well, but didn't feel it wholly worked.
However the truth is that it constantly left me on the outside looking in, with mysteries around the characters that were never really satisfied, and a final reveal that comes out of nowhere and does little to nothing to fill the void retrospectively.The plot centers a group of school girls growing up, who fall into a rash of fainting when one of their number suffers a tragedy.