What's truly depressing about this film is how many female roles it offered, and how all of them conformed to vapid, tired stereotypes about femininity: women as emotional, irrational, kooky, governed by hysteria and the moon, nature, water - victims of their own bodies which are there to get them raped (which in this film life-destroying, as cliché dictates), pregnancy (which literally and inexplicably kills one character in a regrettable case of 'fridging') or Victorian fainting sickness. It tries to be confrontational in its treatment of female coming of age but has created a vacuous surface-deep depiction that offers girls up as wan little nail-chewing nothings fit for being looked at only, preferably in school uniform. Script dismal, acting heroic considering this. Ghostly recaps of dialogue from five minutes earlier in the film show the director's underestimation of her audience, which might explain why all other elements of theme and plot are equally heavy handed. A coy film that tries to shock with metaphors for female self-pleasuring - when actually a long w*nk at home would have been a much better use of time.
Review of The Falling
