It's 1969 at a strict English girls' school where charismatic Abbie and intense and troubled Lydia are best friends. After a tragedy occurs at the school, a mysterious fainting epidemic breaks out threatening the stability of all involved.
Swirling with mystery, regret and compassion, Morley’s impressive fiction carries on where her docudrama Dreams Of A Life left off.
Sensuous coming-of-age drama that feels like a distant British cousin of Picnic At Hanging Rock.
An outbreak of hysterical fainting at a girls’ school is the basis for this wonderfully strange and funny film about forbidden desire.
Top of the class for melodrama and mystery.
Oh dear. There's ambition here, but it may well have been misplaced.
Verdict: Strange, haunting drama.
Unfortunately, the film is less than the sum of its intriguing parts.
Intriguing and unsettling, The Falling eventually sacrifices some of its grip with a more conventional explanation of events but is still striking with a dreamy score by Tracey Thorn.
It may be a little too hysterical to know when’s best to stop, but Morley’s depiction of sisterhood and intimacy is both twisted and arresting.
Carol Morley joins the ranks of Britain’s best film-makers with this enigmatic tale of apparent mass hysteria at a girls’ school.
Carol Morley: 'Mass hysteria is a powerful group activity'
Interview: Carol Morley, 'Mass hysterias tend to centre on the anxieties of their times'
'After you left the room I said, Wow!': director Carol Morley and actress Florence Pugh on their haunting new film The Falling
Cameo, Edinburgh from Friday May 15, 2015, until Thursday May 21, 2015. More info: http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/
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