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Modern work makes you miserable

Mike Phipps reviews Laura Carreira’s On Falling, in cinemas from today.

On Falling is the debut feature of Laura Carreira, who wrote and directed it. It stars Joana Santos who gives an immensely impressive performance as Aurora, a Portuguese ‘picker’ in a huge ‘fulfilment’ warehouse in Glasgow, who is slowly ground down by her job, poverty and social isolation.

Co-produced by Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films company, it’s a powerful piece of social realism. It won Best Director award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and ‘Best First Feature’ at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival, a testimony to the talent involved.

One reviewer called the film “an intense, enveloping experience” and that’s about right. It’s quite claustrophobic: the first daylight scene occurs about 50 minutes into the film. It’s usually night or in a setting with no natural light, and Aurora is always cold, often exhausted, frequently hungry.

There is a large cast, many of whom exchange superficial pleasantries with each other while scrolling through their mobile phones, although even here the acting is refreshingly sharp. Aurora’s attempts to connect with various colleagues invariably fail to land, either at work or in her gloomy shared flat, reinforcing her isolation and estrangement.

Much of the film is about alienation at work. The roar of her vast workplace contrasts with the solitary nature of her repetitive, mind-numbing work. One week, she is called in by the manager and told that, as she has been one of the top workers that week, she can pick a bar of chocolate from a box on his desk. “Good choice!” he enthuses when she does so.

Another time, he comes onto the shopfloor to tell her that the tracker says she’s been too slow – is everything all right? Would she mind speeding up a tiny bit? he asks, almost apologetically. His approach underlines that it is not always individual managers who are at fault but the relentlessness of a system over which she has no control. Likewise, when she asks for a day off at short notice, she is told that the ‘system’ needs more notice.

One day, some schoolchildren are being shown around the warehouse – a future that possibly awaits them. The supervisor explains to them that a lot of walking in involved, because if everything was in the same place, the operations would get too congested. This way, it makes it more interesting for the workforce and “keeps them on their toes, a bit like a treasure hunt,” they are told.

When the supervisor is not looking, Aurora locks eyes with one of the children. He takes a sweet from his pocket, unwraps it and throws it onto the floor in front of her, as if she were an animal in the zoo. It’s one more example of how her job is, as Peter Bradshaw put it in his Guardian review, “strip mining the workers’ humanity and sanity.”

Outside of work, there is little relief from the crushing isolation. At an interview for a new job, Aurora is asked what she does away from work, to relax. She is unable to answer. “The laundry,” she says finally and is unable to say more – before tearfully beginning to invent implausible hobbies and holidays.

In an unusual, uplifting moment, there is a system failure at work and the employees play a makeshift game of volleyball – a full-on human interaction, in which scrolling through one’s phone is not  an option. But it’s a rare note of optimism in an otherwise downbeat story.

One review described On Falling as “an excoriating verdict on a modern Britain characterized by compassionless labour politics, stagnant opportunity and shrugging acceptance of a stifling status quo.”

It certainly says a lot about the nature of work and social life in the 21st century. It’s a film full of subtlety, but with the clear message that you don’t have to be destitute to be poor, and that, without enough money, life can be very miserable. If it sounds bleak, it should be said that it is held together by the fundamental humanity of the lead character, played so expressively by Joana Santos.

Appropriately, the credits roll to What Will We Do When We Have No Money, a powerful dirge-like song from the great Dublin folk group Lankum.

On Falling is in UK and Irish cinemas from 7th March.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.