The modern workplace is the focus of Laura Carreira’s hypnotic debut, a sobering study of a woman’s attempt to stay afloat in contemporary Glasgow. Produced by Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films production company, it has plenty in common with the British social realist’s output and specifically his more recent films, notably his state-of-the-nation trilogy (2016-23), which comprised I, Daniel Blake, Sorry We Missed You and The Old Oak. Carreira, however, brings a subtle but assured lyricism to the subject that has already caught the attention of festival programmers worldwide: after debuting in the Discovery strand at TIFF, her film On Falling now competes in the official selection at San Sebastian and will soon enter the First Feature Competition at the London Film Festival.
Like Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, the subject is the gig economy, but this time from the point of view of a Portuguese migrant. Aurora (Joana Santos) works as a “picker” in a vast warehouse, which, as a job, is as pedestrian as it sounds: working from a list, she hunts down items, pings them with her barcode reader, and sends them off in a crate, presumably to be mailed out, although that’s a part of the process that we never see. As a “top picker” she gets to choose a chocolate bar from a plastic box on her supervisor’s desk, and, to make matters worse, there are guided public tours of the warehouse (Aurora is dismayed to hear the mindless drudgery of her daily life compared, excitedly, to a treasure hunt).
Outside of Aurora’s workspace, we see her at home in her flat, an equally forlorn place that she shares with other workers. Since everyone works in different places, and at different times, Aurora never really gets to know her workmates or her flat mates. Instead, she sits in the kitchen alone, watching popular TV show The Golden Chain on her smartphone, so the arrival of the charismatic Kris (Piotra Sikora) — a “man with a van” who comes from Poland — offers a welcome change. But Aurora’s meagre income makes it impossible for her to reciprocate his generous offers of food and beer, especially when she accidentally smashes her phone, which costs a small fortune to repair.
The plot, such as it is, constitutes a sort of gentle spiral, as Aurora finds it increasingly difficult to break out of the poverty cycle she’s willingly entered into. If this were slavery, it would be easier to rationalize, but what she’s trapped in is a kind of modern serfdom, a dead-end job dressed up with jargon that gives her the illusion of freedom: Aurora is able to choose her working hours but can’t cancel them with less than a week’s notice, and only then via the company website. The light at the end of the tunnel is a job in the care sector, but even that is not a done deal; when she finally gets the interview, Aurora has lost sight of who she is, or rather who she was, and bursts into tears when asked the simple question, “When you’re not at work, what sort of things do you like to do?”
The most likely criticism of On Falling is that we never get the sense of how far Aurora has fallen; how she came to Scotland and why she has no support network. But there’s a sense that this is not Carreira’s prime concern. The over-riding theme of her film — a little like Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (2020) or, more pertinently, Stéphane Brizé’s Measure of a Man (2015) — is the dehumanizing effect of the free market. Aurora is “rewarded” with cupcakes for her company’s massive sales, and lives with the constant threat of random drug tests, sending clear signals that the workforce is neither seriously valued nor trusted.
On Falling is at its best in these subtle moments, and Carreira’s background in shorts certainly shows in its quieter moments, like the short but poignant scene at work in which she takes a child’s baby doll down from a shelf and looks at it for just a little too long. Or the one time in a nightclub with Kris and his friends, where she rests her head on his shoulder, only for him to pull away after tactfully indulging her for a few precious seconds. But despite the seeming impossibility of Aurora’s situation, Carreira ends on an unexpected note of harmony, suggesting a very Loachian belief in the community as a force for good. It’s a brief panacea, however; Aurora’s travails may be slight but they are indelible.
Title: On Falling
Festival: San Sebastian (Competition)
International sales: Goodfellas
Director/screenwriter: Laura Carreira
Cast: Joana Santos, Inês Vaz, Piotra Sikora, Jake McGarry
Running time: 1 hr 44 mins