The Salem witch trials of Massachusetts come immediately to mind; Morley named one of her characters after Abigail Williams who was the first girl in Salem to exhibit symptoms of what was then attributed to demonic possession. “The girls in Salem were accused of faking it,” notes Morley. “Mass psychogenesis is very complex and interesting, and it mostly occurs amongst adolescent girls; it’s common at that age. There is something young women have – what do you call it? Empathy? Connection? They have connected feelings. I wanted to celebrate that power – not attribute it to ‘just hormones.’ These girls are insisting on not being ignored. In the past women who experienced mass psychogenesis were subjected to witch trials, women were being punished for being carnal, for being interested in creating potions to cure illness. Their communities turned against them and it resulted in genocide of women. It’s the age when young women explore things like the Ouija board. There’s a character, Kenneth, Lydia’s older brother (played by Joe Cole), who sort of into occult, he talks about things like ley lines and talks about how ‘occult’ means ‘secret’.” He’s that ’60s boy reading philosophical books, he’s into Aleister Crowley, he thinks that maybe there’s a power to the young women.”
Responses to The Falling have been positive. “People respond to different aspects of it.” Morley recalls attending an industry screening where a man told her he thought the film was very weird. “And this woman said, ‘No that wasn’t weird – that was my life.’ This film has touched people, across genders. Female subjectivity is still not represented that much –it’s still strange, so this is a challenging film. It makes you think about your own experiences.”
The film’s designer had a particular brief: “I wanted it to look as if the film was found, not made,” says Morley. “It’s shot in digital but we found some vintage camera lenses from the ’60s and used those.”
Morley set her story about adolescents at a time when society itself was in flux. “The girls are at a really critical age, they are young women working out who they want to be. The ’60s themselves were a really adolescent time,” she continues. “Society was on the verge of change. We had this amazing technological innovation – sending a man to the moon, yet women still had to wear these big belts to keep their sanitary napkins on. There are lots of representations in film of swinging London, but most people were still set back in so many ways in this country. In 1968 the abortion laws were passed and there were no longer back street abortions but it would have still been very difficult to get one. I wanted to have a look at the 60 in a much more internal way. I set the film in a single sex school setting so they don’t have issues with young men, or weren’t around them that much. I wanted to explore that time and setting without creating that typical old school yard bitchy world.”
The character of Lydia embodies this need for change. “Lydia is looking for change, she’s looking at things around her, she’s a political character,” says her creator. “She’s anti-authority – she sees what’s wrong with the school. She creates an outbreak. The authorities are asking questions about her, trying to repress her. The young often feel the older generation don’t understand them, it’s a classic thing, the young on old, they judge older people as never having lived, and they haven’t had sex.”
Maisie Williams was wonderful to work with, according to Morley. “Maisie was available to me at 16, which was the right age for the role.” Was it seeing Williams in Game of Thrones that led Morley to cast her as Lydia? “I’ve never seen Game of Thrones. I had no concept of the character, no preconceptions. I watched an audition tape and watched a few interviews with her on YouTube. She was really able to step into the character, to bring her to life, and Lydia’s not quite likeable. Maisie brings such complexity and maturity to the role, she creates a complex representation of what it’s like to be a teenage girl.” Morley still hasn’t seen Williams in her other, very famous, role. “As a director you get possessive over your actors,” she says with a laugh. “You don’t want to think they’ve played anyone else.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
