One of the things that I have always been told about dating is that it is never too late.  That advice works well when it comes to finding a relationship at an older age, though it also works in the Faith life.  I have family and friends who once called themselves Catholic, but drifted away from the Church.  There is a lot that can happen outside church walls, especially the longer you spend not under their roofs.  We are all born with concupiscence, a predilection towards things we know spiritually are not good for us.  We are also imbued from the moment of our conception with a desire to know God in ever deepening and more intimate ways.  The path of sin is convenient and easier, sometimes referred to as expediency.  We spend years making what we think is the best decision for the moment and we wake up one day feeling an enormous void in our hearts created by resisting God.  Yet, because it has been forever in these cases, we falsely believe that the opportunity has come and gone, that there is no going back.  Find Me Falling (2024) comes at this scenario from the point of view of somebody who is trying to recapture something they lost, and another person who is afraid that what they had is gone forever.

The person who is trying to find a former feeling is rock star John Almond (Harry Connick Jr.), and we meet him at the beginning of Find Me Falling a couple days after moving into a small cottage on the island of Cyprus, overlooking the Mediterranean from a cliff.  He is trying to forget his career, but he has also come to the tiny republic hoping to reconnect with a former lover.  For the moment, the only people he has a connection with, albeit brief, are the people who jump to their deaths outside his house and the police that come to investigate.  The main one of the latter of these categories is Captain Manoli (Tony Demetriou), who is the first to inform John of the reputation of the rocky outcrop on which his house sits.  It is John’s first real interactions with the locals.  His next comes with the local grocers, with whom he manages to make an arrangement to have his items delivered.  The person who brings his food is Melina (Ali Fumiko Whitney), who also plays music at one of the local taverns.  It is here that Captain Manoli takes John later that night, and John gets to hear Melina play with her band.  They have a brief exchange when Melina finishes her set until Captain Manoli gestures for John to follow him to another part of the tavern to meet the Cyprian police chief’s sister.  Among the guests at the table is Sia (Agni Scott), the woman whom John had a one-night stand with on the island before leaving to begin his rise to stardom.  The look they exchange in that moment melts away all the years they have spent apart, and they spend the night with one another.  I was not too keen on this behavior as a Catholic, but at least when she slips out in the morning she goes straight to Orthodox Mass.  It is the sneaking away that John is not keen on, and he calls her in the middle of the service to convince her to come to his house to have dinner that evening.  He had made the claim that he can cook, but he actually has zero culinary skills.  As such, he turns to Melina to come to his place to cook a meal before Sia’s arrival.  Because Sia is early, she gets there before Melina has the opportunity to depart.  Sia sees Melina’s things there, but before John can explain, Melina walks into the room.  This is when we learn that Melina is Sia’s daughter.  If, like me, you also guess in this moment that Melina is John and Sia’s daughter, you would be correct.  For now, Melina and Sia are shocked by this revelation.  Because Sia is aware of John’s reputation as a rock star, she is suspicious of Melina’s behavior, no matter how little they knew about the facts of their connection.  While Melina goes to her grandmother for some information on the situation, Sia finally returns to John’s place to talk.  Finally, Sia reveals the truth that Melina is his daughter.  She had kept Melina’s existence a secret from John, opting for medical school to become a doctor and provide for their daughter on her own.  Sia thought John’s rock n’ roll lifestyle unsuitable for a family, but he is hurt because he was not given an option.  That night, he goes back to the same tavern where Melina plays to have a meal by himself.  However, during her concert, she pesters him into singing his most popular song, which had been inspired by his past involvement with Sia.  Instead of the typical lyrics, he makes up words that convey how hurt he is to have been kept in the dark about Melina.  To this point, Melina did not know John was her father, so her reaction is equally bad.  Sia has some explaining to do to her daughter, but she is angry with John for embarrassing her in public.  He is aware of his mistake, too, but is home in time to prevent a young girl named Anna (Athina Roditou) from jumping to her death.  She wanted to end her life because he is pregnant out of wedlock and is afraid of her parents’ reaction.  It is not until the following day when John brings her home that he finds out that Captain Manoli is her dad.  While the police officer is angry at first, he nonetheless invites John to be present when Anna gives birth.  Later, Melina convinces John to try to apologize one more time to Sia, serenading her outside her house, but it looks to have failed.  Instead, John decides to leave but gives Melina another song he had written for her mother.  In turn, Melina presents it to Sia, and this finally causes her to forgive.  Instead of returning to the United States himself, John sends Melina to begin her music career, and that is basically where we end.

As Find Me Falling demonstrates, it is never too late to start a music career, or pick things back up again with a person you used to love, presuming the respective parties are free to do so.  It is sad that I have to make such distinctions in this day and age.  What it takes is a decision, not unlike falling off a cliff, but assured that God’s hands are going to be there to catch you and love you no matter what happens.  It takes trust, and that is something John, Melina, and Sia have to learn.  It is the same with God.  To this end, there is a lot of wisdom in the words of the title.  It pertains to the notion of “falling in love,” which John points out is a passive way of do so.  It fits with the common belief that we cannot help the people we love, which is true, but with caveats.  God makes us to love one another, but that does not mean that we have a romantic interaction with everyone we meet.  The feeling for our fellow human being with which God imbues us all at the moment of our birth is what C. S. Lewis identified as “storge,” or empathy.  It is a general sense of bondedness to one another.  From there, it gets narrower down to the kind of love only God can have for us, that being “Agape,” or unconditional love.  What he has for us is freely given without any merit on our part.  Importantly, all the others of which we mortals are far more capable involve a choice.  This is what the movie refers to as “jumping into love.”  In other words, we are not people to which life happens, but we can make choices as to where we jump.  Sometimes, this involves risk, something Sia was not willing to do as a young mother.  What we must realize is that anything done in service of God’s will is less a risk because He will be there to catch us.

What I can say about Find Me Falling is that it finally caught me in terms of watching it.  I had danced around it for a while, but something about seeing the island of Cyprus on film captured my attention this day.  It is a decent movie, but at least you can look at Cyprus.