Falling Into Place movie review (2025) | Little White Lies

Falling Into Place review – Sal­ly Rooney-core for the big screen

05 Jun 2025 / Released: 06 Jun 2025

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Aylin Tezel

Starring Aylin Tezel and Chris Fulton

Two people lying on grass against mountainous backdrop.
Two people lying on grass against mountainous backdrop.
3

Anticipation.

Aylen Tezel, known primarily as an actor, tries her hand at writing and directing.

3

Enjoyment.

The heart is very much on the sleeve, and this film oscillates between passion and earnestness.

3

In Retrospect.

There’s certainly lots to admire here, though a little more economy would go a long way next time.

Aylin Tezel writes, directs and stars along­side Chris Ful­ton in this meet-cute roman­tic dra­ma set between Lon­don and the Isle of Skye.

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.

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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