The Falling **** (2014, Maisie Williams, Florence Pugh, Maxine Peake, Greta Scacchi) – Movie Review

The Falling is a unique and special British movie, teasing and haunting.

Writer-director Carol Morley’s film is set in a well-constructed 1969 atmosphere at a strict English girls’ school where among the pupils are a couple of best friends, the charismatic Abbie (Florence Pugh) and the troubled Lydia (Maisie Williams). A mysterious fainting epidemic breaks out following a tragedy occurring at the school.

[Spoiler alert] More of a Grimms’ fairy tale than a horror movie, it is reminiscent of Heavenly Creatures – at least until something happens to one of the characters. Lydia’s relationship with her agoraphobic mother (Maxine Peake), is one of the film’s tastiest ingredients, profitably explored and with a satisfying, disturbing payoff. Peake is expectedly good and so is Greta Scacchi as the repressed teacher Miss Mantel.

My lips are sealed about the plot twist.

It was notable as a rare film funded by the BFI and one of the 2014 London Film Festival’s handful of world premieres. Pugh was nominated as Best British Newcomer.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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