On Falling review – Solidly-made slice of… | Little White Lies

On Falling review – Solid­ly-made slice of Loachi­an miserablism

07 Mar 2025 / Released: 07 Mar 2025

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Laura Carreira

Starring Inês Vaz, Joana Santos, and Piotr Sikora

Young person standing in a cluttered bookshop, looking pensive.
Young person standing in a cluttered bookshop, looking pensive.
3

Anticipation.

Flying the flag for Brit film's elder statesman, Ken Loach.

3

Enjoyment.

Manual labour is dehumanising. Who knew?

2

In Retrospect.

Realism that seldom feels realistic.

The dire lot of a low-paid fac­to­ry work­er is the sub­ject of this rig­or­ous if hard­ly rev­e­la­to­ry char­ac­ter study from debut direc­tor Lau­ra Carreira.

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.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.