Stream It Or Skip It?

Netflix does itself a disservice with generic movie titles like Fall for Me, three words that don’t at all imply that this is a steamy T&A fest in which good-looking people frequently shed their clothing and smoosh their bits together in front of succulent Mediterranean backdrops. Veteran director Sherry Hormann (Desert Flower) casts Svenja Jung and Theo Trebs as the scantily-clad leads in this movie that’s kinda more about real estate than sex, which I guess gives it a distinct twist? Maybe it should be titled 50 Shades of Amortization or 9 ½ Weeks ’til Closing. 

FALL FOR ME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: What gets you more excited, glistening bodies on the dance floor or this chunk of sundrenched seaside property in Mallorca? THE ETERNAL QUESTION. Before we really wrestle with this Sophie’s Choice situation, we have to meet Lilli (Jung), who’s the hottest tax auditor in the history of tax auditing. Which isn’t to say that conventionally attractive people can’t be way into spreadsheets, calculators and brutally stultifying bureaucracy, mind you; kudos to Fall for Me for bucking the stereotypes, I guess. Anyway. Lilli is from Germany, here visiting her sister Valeria (Tijan Marei) for a catch-up sesh that starts audaciously when Vale picks her up in a vintage sports car and takes her to a sprawling finca in the hills that screams how can you afford all this? Well, Vale and the man she’s head-over-heels for, Manu (Victor Meutelet), plan to buy the place and turn it into a bed-and-breakfast and live happily ever after – except Lilli looks at Manu with a skeptical squint that tells us Vale is blinded by lurve and unable to see something that sure seems like it’s too good to be true.

And thus with this fishy smell begins the plot, which gets gooey-thick once the three of them head to the local club and get to drinking booze and dancing the night away. Lilli orders a drink from the bartender, Tom (Trebs), who takes one look at the moisture delicately glistening on her breastbone and glowers like he’s going to kill and eat her. Threatening? Or just hawt? Interpret away! At least until Tom finds Lilli alone on a balcony and walks up behind her and breathes on her neck and slides his hand down yonder – and then returns to the bar, where he shuffles a pistol behind some vodka bottles. Sexy and dangerous. Woo woo!

The next day, we learn that Lilli and Vale’s late mother left them a slab of real estate in Mallorca. Lilli’s sentimentally attached to the property, but Vale wants to sell it and use her half of the money to buy the B&B. Vale and Manu invite Lilli out for coffee – and ambush her with Nick (Thomas Kretschmann), a real estate agent who just so happens to have a sales agreement on his person for the sisters to sign. Lilli blanches, as she should, because her olfactories work just fine, although she’s not privy to the contents of the following scene, in which we learn – dramatic irony alert! –that Nick and Tom are in cahoots. Lilli returns to the fancy finca, where a burst sprinkler head soaks her braless body, prompting her to knock on the neighbor’s door for help, a door that’s opened by Tom, shirtless in his undies. Well then. It’s only a matter of time before Lilli’s taking a big bite out of his watermelon (literally, not a euphemism) and he’s squeezing a blood orange all over her (also not a euphemism). I think there’s a joke to be made here about zoning ordinances, or maybe putting things in escrow, but that would just be silly.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Fall for Me is a tamer 365 Days (with better acting, thank your deity of choice) crossed with a Keller Williams training video and a Mediterranean travelogue. 

Performance Worth Watching: Jung shows some capacity for depth and presence during more intense dramatic scenes – think Helen Hunt or Jodie Foster, maybe – but it’s clear the film’s emphasis isn’t on performance, story or theme. So she’s got that working against her.

Memorable Dialogue: “Don’t say ‘job’ as if scamming women was honest work,” spits Lilli. Innuendo much?

Sex and Skin: Boobs, waxed heinies, thrusting, faces in crotches, no frontal.

Our Take: I don’t quite understand the ins and outs of this convoluted-ass plan to swindle Lilli and Vale, but it is easily interpreted as sexist horsecrap implying that two women will be so blinded by lust that they’ll be willing to let their seaside property go for a song. And when that doesn’t work, we get Talking Conspirators waving pistols around and blabbing on and on in vapid third-act soliloquies. Such blatant hand-waving of plot details tells us that Fall for Me was built around sex scenes (like a John Wick starts at ground zero with action set pieces and fills in the story around them) and therefore more about ins and outs of another kind. If. You know. What. I mean. 

That is, if you didn’t already notice that Hormann seems to have used the Chris Isaak video for ‘Wicked Game’ as a visual template for the film, although the nookie-on-the-beach sequence (because it’s SO fun to get sand down there!) is shot in color, for that distinctly squashed-flat streaming-movie aesthetic that inspires naptime. The lack of visual dimension at least matches the undepth of the characters, whose motives and interior lives are as scantily rendered as their wardrobes. Their suitcases and closets are packed full of snatch-of-cloth bathing suits, but their heads are empty.  

So we’re left with lots of blandly shot, but pretty scenery worthy of a brochure, and scads of generic schtupping. The bad guys are rendered so obviously bad they stop short of emanating CGI stink lines, and the plot hilariously boils down to a moment where Lilli has a gun to her head and is asked to sign a real estate sales contract, with no acknowledgment that, if she’s dead, she ain’t signing anything. My favorite bit finds Tom feeding a stray dog, and it’s a fluffed and moussed poofy-haired designer breed. Even the loose pooches in this version of Mallorca are objectively gorgeous, and that’s emblematic of Fall for Me, which gives us the squeaky-cleanest, most boring version of Mediterranean Spain imaginable. Might as well just have sex 20,000 times, then. 

Our Call: Worst of all, Fall for Me is too earnest to hate-watch like 50 Shades and the like. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.