Yearning is a lost art. It is hard, in this day and age, to find ways in which to keep people apart enough for passion to grow, fed by hope and hopelessness in turn. What once were near-insurmountable obstacles – distance, marriage to others, unspeakable truths about sexualities – don’t really serve any more. How about religion, then? How about a love between two people doctrinally bound to remain celibate? Catholicism has just the thing, plus it comes with a side order of guilt about sex even for its non-clergy members.
In Falling, written by Jack Thorne, we have Keeley Hawes playing Anna, a nun who took her vows 20 years ago and has lived a sheltered life ever since, under the watchful eye of the abbess Francesca (Niamh Cusack). And we have Paapa Essiedu playing father David, a dynamic young priest patrolling the streets and trying to transform the lives of his impoverished parishioners in Easton, a deprived part of Bristol. It’s very odd from the start, largely because neither of them speaks or acts like an adult human being. Given that Anna is a nun who regularly goes to the shops and food banks with the produce she grows in the convent garden, this makes no sense. And given that David is a priest who lives very much in the real world, it comes to make even less sense. “Those look lovely!” says one grocer of Anna’s box of crops as she enters the shop. “YOU are lovely, Graham!” she replies. “THESE are vegetables!” I’m sorry, what?
