Find Me Falling Parent Guide

After a failed comeback album, John Allman (Harry Connick Jr.) needs a secluded place to lick his wounds and reconsider his singing career. He settles on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, and buys a dilapidated cliffside cottage, sight unseen. The location is undoubtedly scenic, but what John doesn’t know is that the cliff is the local suicide hotspot. Once he finds out the hard way, John is unexpectedly drawn into the life of the local village.

Into John’s circle come the police chief (Tony Demetriou), the store owner (Lea Maleni), a delivery driver who spends her evenings singing in the tavern (Ali Fumiko Whitney), and a distraught pregnant student (Athina Roditou). He also runs across the local doctor, Athanasia (known as Sia and played by Agni Scott), who happens to be the woman who broke his heart decades ago…

You don’t need to be a village fortune-teller to know how this story ends. You’ve seen this movie before, in different settings and with slightly different backstories. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy finds girl. The only question is whether or not the story works. And in Find Me Falling, it fails.

There are multiple reasons for this flick’s inability to gel. First is the script, which delivers a few laughs, but is frequently awkward. The second problem is the cast, who too often seem to be reciting lines instead of inhabiting believable characters. Harry Connick Jr. feels ill at ease and Agni Scott is stiff, which sucks all the chemistry out of their relationship. The most interesting and believable characters in the film are Melina, the tavern singer, and her waiting-for-death grandmother. They are worth watching; the rest of the film isn’t.

Complaints aside, Find Me Falling isn’t all bad. The location shots are gorgeous, and this film feels like an advertorial for the Cypriot tourism board. One look at those breathtaking turquoise waters and exotic Orthodox churches, and you’re going to be checking out ticket prices to the island. Negative content is par for the course in the rom-com genre, with some drinking and smoking, minor profanity, and brief, non-explicit sexual activity. Having suicide as a plot point might be triggering for some viewers, and using it as a comic prompt is bold (or callous) but there is no gory detail and the outlook remains hopeful.

Weirdly enough, my favorite part of the movie is how normal the people look. John and Sia are both well over 40, and no one is trying to make them look 29. The rest of the movie might not feel real, but they look real and I hope that becomes a trend in the rom-com genre.