The Fall (2006)

You could sum it up as an unusually sweet movie about attempting suicide, but that wouldn’t do it justice. The Fall is a very likable, visually impressive, and structurally playful movie about an injured movie stuntman (Lee Pace), who while stuck in a 1920’s Los Angles hospital, contemplates suicide and tells a meandering, seemingly improvised story (conveyed in bright and eccentric fantasy sequences) to a precocious little Hindi girl with a broken arm (Catinca Untaru, the most genuinely adorable little girl in cinema in a long time). The film is a mix of fun with a little poignancy and draws you in with its shear originality and spirit. The film is set in the innovative years of early Hollywood, and does an excellent job of reclaiming the sense of narrative and visual possibilities both of that time and place, as well as what we can be done now with advanced film technologys and a passport (the fantasy sequences take place in locations all over the world). A little pleasure of a film that should certainly be better known then it is, worth your time and suitable for nearly any age group. Thumbs Up.