Find Me Falling: You'll fall in love

Find Me Falling (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated TV-MA, for mild profanity and suicidal content

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Harry Connick Jr. is perfectly cast in this quirky little rom-com.

 

I’ve no idea what prompted writer/director Stelana Kliris to seek him, but we can be grateful that he accepted the role; it’s right in his wheelhouse.

 

When Captain Manoli (Tony Demetriou, center) takes John (Harry Connick Jr.) out for a
night on the town, he has no idea that his good friend Sia (Agni Scott) will turn out to
be his guest's long-ago lover.

The Cyprus setting is an added bonus; it’s hard to imagine a more picturesque and romantic spot. The vibrant local color also includes colorful locals, who enhance the story’s sense of whimsy. The result seems slightly ethereal: an old-world atmosphere with a tightly knit sense of community, where everybody knows everybody, and — in many cases — is somehow related to everybody.

Cinematographer Stephan Metzner also has much to do with this film’s dreamy appearance; establishing vistas are dazzling, and his camera placement in the town’s narrow streets augments the sense of quaint coziness. The way he frames one nighttime shot of the two primary characters, standing in front of trees adorned with strings of white lights, is particularly enchanting.

 

Once-famous rock star John Allman (Connick), dismayed by the abysmal failure of his most recent album, has fled to Cyprus, the most remote spot he can think of (not an entirely random choice, as we soon learn). He purchased a charming cliffside house, sight unseen, from a Realtor who gave him “a really good deal.” (Too good to be true, as it turns out.)

 

Having barely arrived, John wakens one morning to find a young man on his property, poised at the edge of the cliff. An exasperated John ill-advisedly bellows, “This is my property ... go away!” At which point, the fellow steps off the edge, to his death.

 

John’s stunned expression, backed by an offbeat passage in Carlos José Alvarez’s lyrical score, makes this event darkly humorous, rather than tasteless; credit also goes to the delicacy of Kliris’ directorial touch.

 

(Suicide and romantic comedies aren’t mutually exclusive. I was immediately reminded of 1969’s Cactus Flower, which begins as Goldie Hawn’s character attempts to kill herself. Unsuccessfully, but still...)

 

The local head of police, Captain Manoli (Tony Demetriou), reveals to a horrified John that his new home faces a “suicide hot spot” that has long attracted despairing locals and people from various parts of the world. 

New in Town: Quirky coupling

New in Town (2009) • View trailer for New in Town
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and much too harshly, for fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.30.09
Buy DVD: New in Town • Buy Blu-Ray: New in Town [Blu-ray]


Successful romantic comedies are a particularly delicate soufflé.

While it's crucial to have a pair of engaging stars to strike flirtatious sparks against each other, the supporting characters are equally important: They must be interesting in their own right, but not overpowering. The British perfected this recipe years ago, and recent hits such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love, Actually are textbook examples of romantic leads surrounded by alternately hilarious and poignant friends, neighbors and family members.

With the holidays looming, Lucy (Renée Zellweger) matter-of-factly gives her
secretary (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) a brusquely professional cash bonus ... and is
astonished when the other woman responds by gifting her with a homemade
scrapbook. Try as she might, Lucy can't put a damper on the friendly overtures
extended because she's "new in town."

American filmmakers often put all their effort into the A-story and forget to populate their stories with the engaging support staff that could have transformed a routine pas de deux into a truly charming date flick.

Director Jonas Elmer and screenwriters Kenneth Rance and C. Jay Cox, I'm happy to report, did not make that mistake with New in Town.

Renée Zellweger's breezy romp is delightful from start to finish, both because she has a solid romantic "antagonist" in Harry Connick Jr. — the formula invariably demands that the eventual lovebirds hate each other at first sight — and because she has been plunked into the middle of an environment so whimsically droll, and so wonderfully filled with memorable sidebar characters, that the premise is impossible to resist.

It's as if Zellweger's Lucy Hill has been dropped into a community filled with people belonging to the same family as Frances McDormand's Oscar-winning character from Fargo. Just listening to all these folks talk is enough to put you on the floor.

Lucy is introduced in her native environment, as a determined and aggressively materialistic woman who lives in Miami and enjoys being on the fast track in corporate America. She therefore embraces the opportunity to demonstrate her worth by accepting the challenge of supervising the reconfiguration of a production plant that her company owns in Minnesota.

Armed with enough luggage — and bulging contents — to open her own outlet of Bergdorf Goodman, Lucy resolutely hops onto a plane.

Nothing, though, could have prepared her for little New Ulm, Minn.

For openers, the weather is paralyzing, and anybody who has experienced a Minnesota winter will smile with anticipation as Lucy eyes the outside weather, mutters "Oh, how bad can it be?" and prepares to step outside the airport terminal ... still dressed in her lightweight, impeccably coordinated Miami outfit.