Written, directed, and starring Aylin Tezel, FALLING INTO PLACE echoes Sally Rooney’s Normal People: it follows two young lovers who come in and out of each other’s lives while trying to come to terms with the heartbreaking hands they have been dealt.
Tezel’s Kira is stuck living in the shadow of a breakup, while Chris Fulton’s Ian refuses to face his family’s hardships. They meet one night in a little pub on the Isle of Skye, and for a time, they put the real world on hold as they rediscover what life can be like without all of its mess and hangups. Over the next short while, they spend all their time together, inventing games, dancing on kitchen tables, and creating inside jokes that take on greater significance as what they are running from begins to catch up to them.
Skye is beautiful and remote. Kira and Ian can disappear for a while between its snow-capped mountains, where their troubles can’t find them. But they inevitably have to go their separate ways when they return to London, where they live and work. Ian has a girlfriend at home, and Kira is still processing the dissolution of her relationship while trying to move forward in her career. The film is bisected by this shift in scene, focusing first on the chemistry between the two thirty-somethings, then following them individually as their encounter becomes a significant memory.
The real will-they-won’t-they concerns Kira and Ian’s willingness to move forward with their lives. Both of them have hit significant stumbling blocks, and they are deep in denial, refusing to accept the paths in front of them. Once back in the capital, even a bustling London feels as lonely as the distant Skye. Ian’s partner can’t get through to him, and Kira is on the verge of squandering a valuable job opportunity. The question is whether the joy in the film’s first half can give them the courage and vulnerability to move past what holds them in place.
“But as a love story, the film is a little less effective. […] The reintroduction of the potential for a romantic reunion undercuts and confuses its more thought-out focus on self-discovery.”
But as a love story, the film is a little less effective. The opening act on Skye is like a mug of hot chocolate set against a barren wintery landscape, but once they return home, the film’s actual through-line is each character’s emotional development. Kira and Ian remain meaningful to each other in their absence, as the bittersweet echoes of their time together motivate them towards their own healing. Ultimately, though, what matters is whether they can get there. By spending so much of the film’s second half apart, the story moves away from what they can achieve together and stresses what they must do alone. The reintroduction of the potential for a romantic reunion undercuts and confuses its more thought-out focus on self-discovery.
Fulton plays Ian as equal parts charming and broken, bringing to mind Paul Mescal in AFTERSUN; his character hides an ever-present melancholy beneath an always-up-for-a-laugh surface. Kira is the more subtle role, having wrapped up intimate parts of herself in her previous relationship and lost them at its end. While Ian gets to shout and scream, Kira is more inwardly desperate for a way out of her malaise. Both are frustrating company, and it is a credit to Tezel’s writing that you still root for them when even their friends and loved ones struggle to reach them.
Speaking about the film, Tezel says: “This story is not just a love story between two people, it is also a reminder that life is a series of choices. Decisions that we make ourselves, or that are made for us, and that change us.” The story of Kira and Ian’s choices as they find their way through lasting hurt is touching. It is when it longs for closure, not for love, that it truly soars.