Taglines: You can only find love, when you stop running from yourself.
Falling Into Place is a love story set in Scotland and London that follows romance between Kira and Ian, who met too briefly over a winter weekend while on the run from themselves. For a few seconds, they become aware of each other, forgetting the roar of the coach that will take them to a Scottish seaside town.
Neither German Kira nor Scottish Ian know that this brief encounter will change their lives. Both are on the run – from their past as well as the reality of their present lives. When they meet a second time that night, a magical bond develops between the two strangers. But fate tears them apart again and they return to London, unaware that they live in the same city. Kira and Ian will have to face their own demons before they are ready to truly meet in the end.
Falling into Place is a film drama by Aylin Tezel. The film, set on the Isle of Skye, is the debut film of the actress known as a crime scene investigator. The film premiered at the beginning of October 2023 at the Hamburg Film Festival. The cinema release in Germany took place at the beginning of December 2023.
Film Review for Falling Into Place
A line of dialogue, inspired by a classic Hollywood movie, that should be uttered in Falling Into Place, but isn’t, is: “We’ll always have the Isle of Skye.” Kira (the film’s director, Aylin Tezel) and Ian (Chris Fulton) are our two obscenely photogenic protagonists, spending a night of connection and chemistry together but without consummating it, not unlike in that other romantic-cinematic touchstone Before Sunrise. But Linklater’s film delighted in words and discursive chat as the food of love; here, Tezel prefers cross-cut montages of her couple bounding together and hugging on deserted, lamplit streets, a mere signifier of a spontaneously passionate bond, with nothing beneath it.
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With Tezel having enjoyed a successful acting career mainly in Germany – and now starting to work in the UK after featuring in this year’s international Sundance victor Scrapper – Falling Into Place, which premiered at Filmfest Hamburg and is now showing in Tallinn Black Nights’ First Feature Competition, feels like a vehicle devised to flaunt her chops as a filmmaker and storyteller, whilst she offers an equally dynamic performance in front of the camera.
But while undoubtedly coming from the heart, especially as the darker and more destructive sides of the main characters materialise later on in the film, it struggles to convince as an adroitly written romance with insight into human foibles, and lacks a sense of originality and freshness – especially when considered in relation to features made for theatrical release, as opposed to a relationship drama that might be seen on TV or via streaming.
Kira and Ian have both decamped to the far north-west of Scotland from London for coincidentally aligned reasons; they’re each fleeing a dying or concluded relationship, although Ian also has delicate family business to attend to with his unwell father and mentally vulnerable sister.
After locking eyes in a pub, a major spark ensues, before Kira winds down their time together as she realises Ian’s similarity to her ex, Aidan (Rory Fleck-Byrne), in temperament and especially in looks (and indeed, it’s uncanny how similar their features and dress sense are!). But we sense Tezel’s script as being trapped on well-trod ground when Kira muses, in guilelessly innocent language befitting someone much less sophisticated than her, of how we always repeat our worst tendencies in life and love, despite knowing how it hurts us.
The film’s London-set remainder, where we observe their ailing lives as a theatre designer in Kira’s case, and an even less successful singer-songwriter in Ian’s, concludes with them finally reuniting, as the audience will quickly come to suspect. As said, there’s an impressive rawness that Tezel is able to convey in her performance, as we see the depths of her emotional trials, and her projection of her insecurities back towards Aidan and then towards a variety of new and prospective partners (with this element depicted in a fairly affirmative and sex-positive way).
Her direction occasionally maintains tone well, and holds us in the embarrassment and ardour of certain tense exchanges between the characters, but ultimately, this command remains too fitful across the film’s over-extended length.
Directed by: Aylin Tezel Views: 21
Starring: Aylin Tezel, Chris Fulton:, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Juliet Cowan, Alexandra Dowling, Olwen Fouéré:, Samuel Anderson, Michael Carter, Mike Noble, Kathryn Howden, Seylan Baxter
Screenplay by: Aylin Tezel
Production Design by: Andy Drummond
Cinematography by: Julian Krubasik
Film Editing by: David J. Achilles
Costume Design by: Louise Allen
Art Direction by: Heather Donnelly, Katie Elisa Fiore
Music by: Ben Lukas Boysen, Jon Hopkins
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Global Screen
Release Date: December 7, 2023
