Sally Sellout (Sophie Anderson) met Liza her lover a few years back when she was playing a London gig with her then band, the pair instantly had a connection, and so Sally decided to stay in London and move in with Liza. However the relationship has now gone sour due to Liza’s overbearing jealousy and desire to control every aspect of her partner’s life. To add to the tension is the involvement of pimp Vin (Kai Brandon Ly) a friend of Sally’s and Liza’s attraction to Jamie (Collin Clay Chace).
The opening few minutes of this dull, self-indulgent mess are about as interesting and challenging as the film gets. We see Liza going over old video footage of Sally playing in her band, reliving old memories and letting her mind wonder about why Sally stays in contact with a former girlfriend. What starts out as a content expression soon turns into a frown, followed by outright anger. This scene is shot with a grungy sensibility, we get bold scratchy images with dirty, but raw photography and broken up chords capturing the process of a band jamming, and a relationship trying to figure itself out. It is by far the most powerful scene in Break My Fall, trouble is it is never built upon and we soon see its true colours.
First of all the central relationship is neither believable or interesting enough for you to care and be emotionally engaged in, in fact many of the problems between Liza and Sally are just silly and the sort of thing you might see in Eastenders. The story does follow that very basic, formulaic pattern where the pair fight, make up, fight, one of them does something they may regret in the morning, fight again, makeup etc. To add to this the acting is very weak and plain, and the emotions of the characters are just so plastic.
Also the film is so badly directed and amateurism that at times it resembles one long YouTube Video in which you are watching people go about their everyday lives without doing anything remotely interesting. The director clearly has no idea how to film two people engaging in an argument as at one stage with the couple rowing you get the shaky camera treatment. The whole thing is extremely navel gazing to the point that we see an endless shot of Liza strumming a guitar, smoking and staring off into the distance looking bored, which of course is the filmmakers profound way of showing isolation.
It is at least half an hour too long, and crudely resorts to Lesbian stereotypes like showing Liza and Sally as arty outcasts by having them hang out at Rough Trade records; mess about in clothes stores and wearing New York Dolls T-Shirts. One of the lowlights of the film year so far, a true insult.
Director: Kanchi Wichmann
Writer: Kanchi Wichmann
Stars:Kat Redstone, Sophie Anderson and Kai Brandon Ly
Runtime: 107 min
Country: UK
Film Rating: 
