16/11/2023 - German actress Aylin Tezel makes her debut as a writer-director with this fairly clichéd account of young love and transitory connections

A line of dialogue, inspired by a classic Hollywood movie, that should be uttered in Falling Into Place [+see also:
interview: Aylin Tezel and Yvonne Wellie
film profile], 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.

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 [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] – 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.

Falling Into Place is a German production staged by Weydemann Bros and Compact Pictures. Its world sales are handled by Global Screen GmbH.