Falling Into Place (2023) From Meet-Cute to Ugly Realities

Released to cinemas on 6th June, Falling into Place is the directorial debut from the German actor Aylin Tezal, who has also written the screenplay and takes the lead role of Kira. Set in the urban metropolis of London and the windswept and rural Skye, Tezal’s seemingly personal film is a relationship drama that explores the knotty entaglements of romantic endeavours in your thirties and an overall sense of feeling lost and ill-equipped for adult life in the twenty-first century.

The film co-stars Chris Fulton, whose character of Ian is a Skye native, returned home to visit his troubled family, which includes a sick father (Michael Carter) and a depressed and suicidal sister, Annie (Anna Russell-Martin). Letting off some steam on a night out that has already included a drunken hook-up in the gents toilets, he catches the eye of Kira, who is fending off some full-on enthusiatic attentions from a drunken would-be suitor. Left alone together, the drunken duo’s meet-cute has a Before Sunrise quality, as they stay up together all night and the following day, often playing a game of challenges concocted by Kira. Reality bleeds into their magical encounter however when Kira reveals that she is still nursing a broken heart following a split from a long-time boyfriend and Ian reveals that he is currently in a relationship, albeit an unhappy one.

Pushing these complications and vulnerabilities aside, the pair continue to hang on to the magic of their meet-cute but it all starts to crumble when Ian is first tasked with getting a prescription for his father and then summoned to the local hospital when it’s revealed that his sister has made another attempt on her life. In these scenes, Kira glimpses the trauma that the charismatic Ian faces, often with sudden aggression and frustration and an outright inability to come face to face with Annie in the hospital. With the lustre of their whirlwind romantic connection fading, the pair must part to return to their normal lives – lives which, coincidentally, both occur in London.

Back in the bustling capital, Tezal explores their imperfect existences. Kira is a theatrical set-designer, hung-up on her newly ex-boyfriend, an Irish actor called Aidan (Rory Fleck-Byrne). We see her trying to reclaim her independence, working for director Lewis (Samuel Anderson) seems like a good idea, but the opportunity to move in the same circles as Aidan, who is moving on from their affair far better than she is, serves to reopen wounds that haven’t had time to heal, whilst her mature friends Sara (Juliet Cowen) and Jacky (Layo-Christina Akinlude) make the mistake of trying to match-make her with another Irish man. Meanwhile, Ian is shown to be a musician, struggling to find his own unique voice, and situated in an unhappy relationship with girlfriend Emily (Alexandra Dowling), whose middle-class privilege he seems to resent despite, as she points out, him benefitting from it personally.

As their romantic relationship begins to break down, Ian tentatively rebuilds his sibling one with the recovering Annie. In these separate strands, we witness the pair navigate their issues and their demons to find some mutual healing. Kira confronts the futility of her feelings for Aidan and begins to inch forward from her heartbreak by seeking recovery through her creativity. She begins to paint portraits that recapture the magic she felt on Skye, both in her brief relationship with Ian and the glimpses of his family life that she was privy to. So successful are these works that she secures an exhibition with gallery owner Judy (Olwen Fouéré) just as Ian too begins to turn a corner.

Of course, by this point in the movie the audience are left to wonder, not so much if, but how Kira and Ian will be reunited. Unfortunately, Tezal relies on a number of contrivances to reach this conclusion, none of which ring true. Stretching credulity is unfortunately not the only issue with her movie. Whilst the commitment to highlighting the damage and vulnerability of its protagonists from the off – at a time when lesser filmmakers would be focusing squarely on the rainbows and sunshine – is refreshingly laudable, it does mean that Ian and Kira are not always sympathetic. Ultimately, the longer you spend with them, the more you begin to wonder if we’re meant to excuse their behaviour solely on the basis that they’re attractive people. There’s an earnest desire on Tezal’s part to explore the rawness of her protagonists lives, a slavish devotion to the anguish of they feel, that borders on the tiresome and trite, not helped by a one-note tendency from the actors to rely on shouting in their performances.

In these moments of emotional torment the dialogue in particular suffers, and I wonder if this is an issue when writing in something that isn’t your first language. Far better is Tezal’s visuals; a dialogue-free sequence in which Ian and Kira lay together in bed is so especially memorable that it’s unsurprisingly become the basis of the film’s poster.

MARK’S ARCHIVE – FALLING INTO PLACE