Someone has been reading a little too much Sally Rooney, and that someone is director/writer and star Aylin Tezel, whose ambitious debut feature, Falling Into Place, plays like a finely-honed piece of Rooney-core for the big screen. Not a criticism, per se, but definitely a signifier of the film’s strident views on love, happenstance, shame, trauma, romantic demons, family demons, professional demons, and any type of demons really.
Tezel plays Kira, a speak-as-you-find German living in the UK, who meets cute (twice!) with Chris Fulton’s ultra-sensitive modern guy, Ian, initially while the pair are holidaying on the Isle of Skye, and later back in their normal lives in the urban hellscape of London.
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Their idyllic first contact is represented via milky lens flares and bursts of euphoric, Eno-esque ambient noise, as their tentative connection swiftly blossoms into something magical, but that “something”, it transpires, can be no more in this moment.
As both have to return to the dismal drudgery of their personal and professional lives, not to mention their actual romantic partners. The idea of finding that perfect other but having to back away due to circumstance certainly has value, though Tezel does paint Kira and Ian as the only pure souls in a world of self-involved fools. And as such, they’re never entirely likeable or relatable heroes.
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