A Portuguese immigrant works as a warehouse picker in a sprawling
Amazon-like fulfilment centre in Scotland.
Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Laura Carreira
Starring: Joana Santos, Ines Vaz, Piotr Sikora, Neil Leiper
Work: everybody hates it, that’s why it's called "work." Most of us are
not fortunate enough to be doing a job that we actually like and which,
as they say, "fulfils" us; and so instead - if you are one of the
75% to 95% of people
who despise waking up in the morning in order to passively devote the
majority of your one and only life to an occupation which slowly kills
you, spending the time with people who irl you'd cross the road to
avoid, all at the mercy of a hierarchy which
favours and rewards the worst
- we live for
the weekend, a diminutive channel between labours which is usually given over to
recovery. It's what empires are built upon, a mendacious LinkedIn update
stamping upon your inbox forever.
The trick is to "find something you enjoy doing," apparently. As if it's
that simple! Take Aurora (Joana Santos), a Portuguese immigrant
working in a Glaswegian Amazon (never spelled out in the film but
obviously so) warehouse in Laura Carreira's impressively brutal
debut feature On Falling. Aurora's back story, her reasons for being in Scotland in this
particular role are not explicated; her story is typical of the
61,000 people
who break their backs so we can have our products cheaper and faster and
with no corporation tax going back into the country (not me: my NY
resolution was to stop buying books off Amazon. Gold star, please). Like
everyone (you'd hope) in the role of "picker" (the dehumanising nickname
given to the workers), Aurora harbours hopes of a more self-actualising
job as a care worker, but until then it's the night shifts and late
mornings of searching the shelves for consumer goods, sharing a car
journey with another worker who pass agg reminds her to pony up for
petrol, before returning to the awkward small talk of humble shared
accommodation.
On Falling is like The Office (the UK one,
not whatever the American version was) if it was shorn of that show's
implicit warmth and shared humour. Carreira's film is necessarily bleak,
and what rings especially true is the systematic pettiness of the
pecking order within the workplace. In a moment which will seem far
fetched to anyone who hasn't been similarly in situ, Aurora is called
into the office. There is the usual middle manager pomp and mystery
surrounding the occasion, a way of destabilising the immigrant worker
for who such a summons is naturally a cause for consternation. This
morning it is ostensibly good news, though: as Aurora has been very
effective at picking stuff off the shelves she is allowed the reward of
a chocolate bar from a cardboard box. Well done! She chooses a Wispa and
manages to look suitably grateful. But forget being allowed to have a
doctor's appointment if you are unaware of UK employment law, an
exploitable gap in your understanding which Aurora's bosses are fully
aware of. Later, there is the indignity of a staff wide drug test, the
enaction of which indicates the
superfluous authoritarianism of these people. So fucking what if a worker enjoys controlled substances? They're not
doing it in work, and if they were, say, imbibing amphetamines while
"picking" then surely that would enhance performance? If his workers are
wasting their drugs on his sordid cardboard workhouses then Bezos should
be thankful. The jumped-up jobsworth who justifies the test has a
straight-faced nerve to invoke the "values" of the company...
Carreira tempers this cruelty with moments of small but sincerely felt
kindnesses. On a rare social outing, Aurora's visit to a nightclub is
given over to caring for a drunk stranger (good on you Aurora, x), a
scene mirrored later when circumstances begin to eat Aurora whole and
the situation is reversed. Co-workers are distant but gentle, and there
is a warm hearted Polish fella who shares living space with Aurora, and
who she, inevitably, fosters a crush on. Sadly, the liking is unrequited
in this film which essays isolation and the increasing impossibility of
forging meaningful connections in the gig economy. A running motif of
the film is people staring staring staring at their phones, an image
congruous with the digital facilitated tenements of the characters'
employment, but also an indication of the short-term security which the
automatic scroll confers. We are like children who never dropped our
safety blanket, On Falling suggests, in its bare
presentation of social alienation wherein we share the grim experiences
of work and hand to mouth existence but precious little else.
Like when Travis Bickle's telly falls over, Aurora starts to become
undone when she drops her phone and shatters the screen: the cost to
repair it is 99 notes which will take her
around a shift to cover. Not just an escapist link to a world beyond, she needs it to keep in
touch with prospective employers regarding interviews for the career
which she is better suited for. The film is at its most credibly tragic
in the eventual consultation, wherein Aurora, conditioned to the
mechanisms of "job" and the insularity of "not job," loses the momentum
of why she is an appropriate candidate for the role of care worker, as
if her personality has been eroded in the corridors of cardboard boxes
which make up her existence. Santos is poignant in the role, projecting
disaffection and deep sadness in her gamine movements and dark eyes.
Carreira directs her with repressed anger in a controlled
administration, the authenticity of which allows us only the hollowest
of happy endings.
On Falling is in UK/ROI cinemas
from March 7th.
