The Falling.

Seeing the statement 'a film by Carol Morley' is a recommendation in it self. Having previously seen two of her films, her first full-length feature film Edge (2010) which tells about a collection of random misfits who descend on the hotel on the Sussex coast of England in the middle of a snow-covered winter landscape, and her docudrama Dreams of Life (2012) a movie which attempted to reconstruct the life of a 36 years old young woman, Joyce Carol Vincent, who lay dead for 3 years in her London flat, I was looking forward to seeing her latest feature film outing as writer and director.

 

Carol Morley.

Set in an Oxfordshire all girls day school in 1969 The Falling (2014) is about sexual hormonal hysteria driven by sexual repression of a group of teenage girls and there female teachers. The two main characters are Lydia ‘Lamb’ Lamont (Game of Thrones Maisie Williams, who based on this role certainly has a future in the industry) whose father has run off leaving her agoraphobic mother Eileen Lamont (Morley regular Maxine Peake) to look after her and her brother Kenneth (Joe Cole). At school Lydia becomes infatuated with the sexual permissive Abigail Mortimer (Florence Pugh) and they form a very close loving friendship, not just exhibited by carving their initials in a tree but by some very intimate integration between the two friends. After a rather unexpected event, which places Lydia in the limelight, the school is involved in an epidemic of the hysteria manifested by fainting spells.

 

Best of friends Abigail and Lamb.

The agoraphobic Eileen Lamont.

This movie should put Carol Morley up there with other British female filmmakers of stature including Lynne Ramsay, Clio Barnard and Andrea Arnold. It’s a powerful fascinating film, poetic, with an autumnal dream like landscape helped by the cinematography of Claire Denis’s long time calibrator, the French born Cesar Award winning Agnes Godard and her 1960’s camera lenses. The original soundtrack is by Tracy Thorn who is best known as one half of Everything but the Girl. The viewer is forced to decide what is realism and what is alternative reality in a film that certainly crosses the boundary between the two with its deep-rooted sexual awakening of young womanhood.    

Edge.

Although made before Dreams of a Life (2011) Carol Morley first fiction feature film was not released until after her documentary about the death and life of 38-year-old Joyce Carol Vincent whose decomposed body was found in her Wood Green flat after lying for three years. Although Edge (2010) has a certain mood and atmospherics that remind you of the this later film its not as hard hitting – but then it wouldn’t be, as no other film quite evoked the feeling of loneliness that befell Joyce Vincent. 

 

Director Carol Morley at Birling Edge.

Filmed virtually on the edge of Birling Gap, which is situated on the Sussex coast of England not far from Beachy Head, in the Cliff Edge Hotel which is getting ever nearer the chalk cliffs and will in a few short years disappear into the sea. Written and directed by Morley it tells about a collection of random misfits who descend on the hotel in the middle of a snow-covered winter landscape. Each one has their own tale of misfortune to relate. The middle aged Elly (Maxine Peake) returns there because her friend had fallen off the cliff and she blames herself, Wendy (Marjorie Yates) an elderly woman who wants to end her life because her husband left her for another man, Philip (Joe Dempsie) is there to meet Sophie (Nichola Burley) on a blind date but Sophie has her own agenda. Musician Glen (Paul Hilton) is only on a day trip but takes a shine to the depressed Elly. Also in attendance are three members of staff - all with there own hang-ups!

 

Every thing gets nearer the Edge.

If I was being pernickety I would ask why this desolate and run down hotel remained open during what would be normally be the closed season? But I think the filming took place there because of its micro budget and without the unexpected snow it could have been any time of year. Sex in this film has never looked so unattractive but despite that and although the ending is a little formulated it is a film worth seeing, very well made and acted. Sometimes a simple story line can be really enjoyable and it’s nice to see characters included who are not normally represented on the big screen.

Dreams of a Life.

It was when writer and director Carol Morley read an article in the Sun newspaper that carried the haunting headline “Woman lays dead for three years” that she became intrigued.

On 25 January 2006, officials from a north London housing association repossessing a bedsit overlooking the busy Wood Green Shopping City owing to rent arrears made a grim discovery. Lying on the sofa was the skeleton of a 38-year-old woman who had been dead for almost three years. In a corner of the room the television set was still on, tuned to BBC1, and a small pile of newly wrapped Christmas presents lay on the floor. Washing up was heaped in the kitchen sink and a mountain of post lay behind the front door. Food in the refrigerator was marked with 2003 expiry dates. The dead woman's body was so badly decomposed comparing dental records with an old holiday photograph of her smiling was the only way to identify it[1]. This was the body of Joyce Carol Vincent.

It took Carol Morley five years to research and make her first documentary feature film Dreams of a Life (2011) about a young woman of which so little was originally known. She placed adverts in newspapers, the internet and even placed one on London’s black taxi cabs to find people who knew this friendly good looking sexy young women who so easily became a forgotten person. Eventually friends and colleges gradually came forward, but not her four sisters who wanted to remain anonymous, and it’s these people who the director skillfully interviews to give us a framework to Joyce Vincent’s short existence. Morley also gives us reconstructed elements of her life showing the very young schoolgirl (Alix Luka-Cain) with her mother and father and the older Joyce who is convincingly played by Zawe Ashton, we also get to witness the Wood Green flat in which the body was found.

This film raises many fundamental questions including how easy it is to get lost in a crowded city and how this vibrant young women can disappear without her so called boyfriends, family and wide circle of friends appearing to care. Where were the local authorities and utility companies that let the outstanding bills mount up for three years while a lonely corpse was allowed to rot? This must be one of the most heartbreakingly depressing but eye opening documentary films I have ever seen and one which evokes the true meaning of Christmas for many people: loneliness. The bright lights are not always as attractive as they seem?

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[1] Carol Morley The Observer 9^th October 2011.