Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Before I Fall
2017 · Ry Russo-Young · Before I Fall on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the same gray, misty light morning after morning. (light)
Fimognari shoots overcast skies and foggy coniferous forests in a cool, desaturated register, so the repeating day feels melancholy and dreamlike rather than like a bright teen comedy.
Payoff: The color of the world tells you this loop is not going to be fun.
Watch how Samantha's group fills the hallway frame. (staging)
In the first passes through the day the four friends are staged at the center of every frame, with other students pushed to the edges.
Payoff: Position in the image tells you who the school treats as important.
Notice which parts of the morning get skipped over. (cutting)
The alarm, the drive, the corridor get replayed each time, but later passes compress or vary these beats, trusting you to fill in what earlier loops already established.
Payoff: You read Samantha's change by measuring it against a version of the day you already carry in your head.
Listen for the alarm marking the exact start of a reset. (sound)
The same morning sounds return at the top of each loop, telling you without any dialogue that the day has started over again.
Payoff: The sound design does the work of announcing a reset that the story never explains out loud.
Watch the four girls move and dress in sync. (staging)
Their coordinated outfits, cars, and synchronized walk down the hallway visually encode status and belonging without a line of dialogue explaining the hierarchy.
Payoff: You can read the social order of the school directly off how these four move together. In the reading: the gest. Deleuze calls a posture that exposes a social relation a gest: their synchronized walk performs the hierarchy without anyone having to say it.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch how the same morning changes slightly each time the day repeats.