I Had A Fall

An entrepreneurial young woman experiences first-hand the nightmarish pain of being in an abusive relationship.

 

Skyrim (Javed) is in fashion. She’s directing a photoshoot, handling things as the flashbulbs pop, and she looks great. Her friend and colleague, Barbara (Skorupa), is also there, doing fashion, and she also looks great, except for maybe a bit too much make-up today, around one eye. It was just a clumsy accident, Barbara says, ‘I Had A Fall.’

 

Except that Sybelle Cheesman and Jobe Wolf’s new short film isn’t just about how Barbara is living with the painful truth behind her black-eye. ‘I Had A Fall’ is about every one of the 1 in 4 women in the UK who experience some form of domestic abuse, and it’s Skyrim who’s going to tell us her story.

 

Back at home, Skyrim is not the fashion star that she is at work. Her partner, Clive (Perry) is more interested in hanging out with his work buddy Steve, than he is in staying at home with her. Steve just so happens to be Barbara’s man, and he’s been giving Clive pointers recently about how to keep his relationship just the way he likes it, with no drama. Skyrim tries her best to love her man, but he’s too caught up on the train of toxic masculinity to see anything in front of him but red.

 

In an all too familiar story, we find that the lessons of the Manosphere, and the pervasive sociopathic practices of the Tate brothers and other low-life PUA’s, offer Clive a grasping at control that he thought he might never have. In Cheesman and Wolf’s script, we are faced with some very bare dialogue which cuts right to the bone, and which scars quickly. The tension and the aggression are palpable in every scene, but ever so mildly guarded, to keep Skyrim believing that she is in a loving relationship that just needs some help, and we are brought along with her, all the way to the end.

 

The violence is shocking, as it should be, and the direction from Wolf puts us right where the words and actions have the most impact. In every moment we see how she loves him, and in every moment together we see how he convinces himself to hate her. We are close in with the couple throughout the film, and the intimate spaces keep us with the characters to feel every bite in every word, and every sting in every touch.

 

As the foreboding increases, Wolf chooses certain moments to ratchet up the stakes, and we are thrust from safe and comfortable, to survival, very quickly, as Clive’s behaviour deteriorates. The sound design is used effectively to mark out these moments, with El Rashid’s score underlining the danger and the gut-wrenching that comes with the breakdown of security in a relationship, while Nadia Javed and Laurence Hezili Perry’s strong performances ground the characters as very real people.

 

‘I Had A Fall’ is not a film for those who are afraid to face up to hard truths. If 1 in 4 women are experiencing domestic abuse, then both Skyrim and Barbara’s stories are true, as well as countless others. Here we are shown in intimate detail how that comes about, and how traumatic it is when it happens. Cheesman and Wolf do not shy away from dealing with the realities of very difficult situations, and in so doing, encourage the audience to raise their awareness of the women in their lives, too.

 

‘I Had A Fall’ stands strong as testament to what women live every day in the UK, and worse the world over, and makes a point of making you look at what you don’t want to see, when you know that statistically, you’re probably seeing it at some point in some of the people around you. There’s a strong message, and a strong call for solidarity through watching this film, for anyone who might turn up one day to say, ‘I Had A Fall.’