On Falling review – Solid­ly-made slice of Loachi­an miserablism

Heavy duty rope and over­sized sex toys are the main prod­ucts that dili­gent, mousy item pick­er Auro­ra (Joana San­tos) has to load into her cart while on the clock for a Scot­tish ful­fil­ment ware­house. Self-imposed death and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of escape are cen­tral themes to Lau­ra Carreira’s stren­u­ous­ly down­beat work­place dra­ma on the dehu­man­is­ing effects of low-wage labour – it’s a film that puts paid to any view­ers who believe that menial fac­to­ry work is a bar­rel of laughs.

Our Por­tuguese expat hero­ine lives hand-to-mouth in com­mu­nal lodg­ings with a gag­gle of for­eign work­ers, and the nar­ra­tive rump of the film involves how hav­ing to sud­den­ly shell out to have her phone screen fixed sends her life into eco­nom­ic tail­spin. Her fixed income, which we assume cov­ers rent and basics, does not allow for such con­sumer frip­peries, and it’s not long before she’s hav­ing to mine-sweep cup­cakes from a staff cel­e­bra­tion just to pre­vent from pass­ing out.

The film suc­cess­ful­ly cul­ti­vates and air of per­pet­u­al gloom, as joc­u­lar fac­to­ry staff are seen advis­ing Auro­ra to ​“cheer up”, offer­ing cheap choco­late bars as a reward for high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and direct­ing any and all basic HR request to ​“the app”. And if she’s not pulling the trig­ger on her scan­ning gun in a time­ly fash­ion, first an alarm rings, and then it’s a vis­it from the gawky teenage line man­ag­er telling her to shape up or ship out.

The film is pro­duced by Ken Loach’s Six­teen Films, and had Carriera’s name not been on the cred­its you’d be for­giv­en for think­ing that the old rab­ble rouser him­self had made it. In tone it cleaves quite close­ly to the films Loach has made with screen­writer Paul Laver­ty, in that polit­i­cal out­rage and tab­u­lat­ing the humil­i­a­tions met­ed out on the work­ing class­es by the unfeel­ing cap­i­tal­ist machine is often more impor­tant than dra­mat­ic sophis­ti­ca­tion or for­mal cre­ativ­i­ty. Suf­fer­ing is the only emo­tion worth a damn.

While the film pleads with us to pity Auro­ra and her sor­ry lot, it does very lit­tle to con­tex­tu­alise her dire sit­u­a­tion. She appar­ent­ly has no fam­i­ly or friends, no aspi­ra­tions beyond secur­ing a pay­cheque to cov­er her rent and ameni­ties, and her only life plan is to move into the sim­i­lar­ly gru­elling and under­paid world of home car­ing. The urgent need to fix her phone sud­den­ly seems a lit­tle hys­ter­i­cal giv­en that her only use for it is to flick through Tik­Tok videos, yet per­haps the sug­ges­tion here is that some peo­ple reach such depths of chron­ic depres­sion and lone­li­ness that make-up tuto­ri­als and junk food recipes can form a mea­sure of solace.

San­tos deliv­ers a com­mit­ted per­for­mance as this hap­less lost soul, yet the film is too intent on feath­er­ing out its dis­mal the­sis on an exis­tence for which sui­cide, for many, offers a sweet release.