The Fall - looks great, but what is it?

Saw a film last night as part of our ongoing 'weird film night' series that emphatically ticked the weird box. 'The Fall' is about a girl (Alexandria) and a man (Roy) who are both stuck in hospital wards, Roy has suffered a terrible injury and has been dumped by his girlfriend - I think. He wants to kill himself and so starts telling Alexandria stories as a way of befriending her - his goal is to get her to bring him the drugs that he can use to overdose himself. At least that what I think was going on.

This all sounds fair enough, but 'The Fall' isn't a traditional kind of film. It focuses on the fantasy that Roy is telling Alexandria rather than the real life drama in the hospital. This fantasy tale could be derived from any number of standard fantasy tropes (band of heroes, evil overlord, freeing the slaves etc) and is the centre piece of the film. It's shot on a variety of locations where there's lush scenery and ample opportunity to dress everyone up in big bright colours and weird outfits. It certainly looks great, but it lacks any connection to the "real world" in the film and so any metaphor they were going for ends up falling flat.

No amount of interesting cuts, clever cinematography or quirkily amusing mispronunciations by Alexandria can make up for the fact that there is no plot or narrative in 'The Fall'. Most of the time the characters are difficult to understand or connect with, while events in the real world seem to have been made deliberately confusing as some kind of attempt at 'art'. By concentrating on the - admittedly great-looking - fantasy world of Guy's story, the story of the real world is completely lost. By the end I wasn't sure who the main character really was, if his girlfriend had really left him or even if I cared about any of it to be honest. The best bit was the montage of 1920s film stunts at the end - they really didn't have health and safety laws back then!

In reality 'The Fall' shouldn’t be called a film at all, it's more of a weirdly interesting art installation. I wont be recommending it.