Scotland

FALLING INTO PLACE: uncommonly authentic

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Aylin Tezel and Chris Fulton in FALLING INTO PLACE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The absorbing Scottish romantic drama Falling into Place begins on the Isle of Skye when two visiting London creatives meet outside a rowdy pub and flirt.  Kira (Aylin Tezel), a theater set designer, is on holiday.  Ian (Chris Fulton), a musician, has grown up on Skye and intends to shoehorn in an infrequent visit with his family. Kira is trying to get beyond a recent breakup, while Ian’s relationship is in its final throes. 

When Kira hears that Ian has a girlfriend, she puts in the brakes, but she’s drawn enough to Ian that she accompanies him as he faces some family drama. Then, Kira and Ian return separately to London. The audience soon wants these two to get and stay together, but they’ll need to get past some trauma in Ian’s family, his current romantic entanglement, Kyra’s feelings for her ex, an attractive boss with his eyes on Kira and some bad timing.

Utterly devoid of the tropes in conventional movie romances, Falling into Place is profoundly authentic. This is the first feature for German-born writer/director Aylin Tezel (who also stars as Kira), and it’s a very strong and promising debut. As a director, she paces Falling into Place perfectly, keeping us eagerly engaged as the threads if Kira and Ian meet and part and meet again. She is especially adept directing the scenes in the Isle of Skye bar and the London art gallery opening, with lots of moving bodies and ambient sound. But it’s Tezel’s screenplay, without a single false note, that really soars.

I screened Falling Into Place for its US premiere at Cinequest.

MY OLD SCHOOL: how could this happen? and why?

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Alan Cumming in MY OLD SCHOOL, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The absorbing documentary My Old School is about a guy who fooled his Scottish high school classmates and, notably, the school authorities, into believing that he was not who he really was. The impersonation was extreme, audacious and more than a little creepy, and resulted in a scandal well-known in the British Isles.

Writer-director Jono McLeod was one of those classmates, and he has been able to garner more than a handful of the kids and teachers who were eyewitnesses. And he secured over five hours of audio from the impersonator himself, which are brilliantly lip-synced by actor Alan Cummings (kind of the opposite of voiced by).

MY OLD SCHOOL, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

If that weren’t creative enough, McLeod uses animation to illustrate key moments in the story. And, surprisingly, there comes a video clip of a high school performance of the musical South Pacific, a performance that would be excruciatingly mundane – except for what the audience knows.

In telling My Old School, McLeod reveals the deception itself right away and then gradually unspools a series of more shockers, about how the ruse was executed, with whose help and the motivation. It’s quite the story.

My Old School opens in theaters this weekend, including at the Opera Plaza in San Francisco.