On Falling Review

It’s a job done by thousands of people, but we never think about it. And that’s because we never see them. Order something online and the only person you’re likely to have any contact with is the delivery driver. Yet behind them is a silent army in vast, anonymous warehouses, matching the products on the shelves with the orders so they can be loaded onto those familiar vans. It’s Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in the 21^st century. And it’s the setting for Laura Carreira’s directorial debut, On Falling.

Aurora (Joana Santos) works in a massive fulfilment centre – to use the jargon – in Scotland. Originally from Portugal, she’s quiet and shy and, although her job as a picker means she’s surrounded by other people, it’s actually very solitary. Aside from brief conversations with her manager, like everybody else she’s actively discouraged from speaking to colleagues while working. Any chance of making real connections with other people are squashed and everybody at her flatshare, while pleasant, keeps themselves to themselves. Her solitude and inability to break away from the loneliness and small talk of her day-to-day life threatens her sense of self in a world where the algorithm increasingly rules.

MORE: CHECK OUT OUR EXCLUSIVE CHAT WITH THE FILM’S DIRECTOR, LAURA CARREIRA, HERE

We’ve met the delivery drivers before, in Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You (2019) and there’s a strong sense of connection between the two films. That they show us different sides of the same coin isn’t overly surprising, given that Loach’s Sixteen Films was heavily involved in making the movie, but there’s no doubt that Carreira’s cinematic style and world view have found a natural home. The carefully paced 100 minutes have the look of a documentary, with its naturalistic acting – Santos is superb – and an authenticity borne out of the director’s conversations with real life pickers. The humiliation and callousness of one moment, when Aurora learns she’s one of the top members of the team that week and is rewarded with a chocolate bar, stops you dead in your tracks and lodges itself in your brain. And it was a story Carreira heard a number of times when she was putting the film together.

At its heart, On Falling is a meditation on social isolation, but it also provokes an unexpected reaction. As you watch Aurora in her efforts to make some form of meaningful contact, an anxiety builds, a fear that something bad is going to happen to her. The irony is that, by the time you become aware of it, that terrible something is already part of her life, and it’s a loneliness that’s impossible to shake off, even when random individuals give her cause for hope.

A small film about a growing issue that affects increasing numbers of people, On Falling is also a quiet one that speaks its truth loud and clear and is a truly impressive debut from Carreira. A worthy winner of the Sutherland Award at last year’s London Film Festival, it introduces us to a new filmmaker with an unerring ability to get to the heart of the everyday, and find the humanity in the soulless.