Movie Recommendation: Free Fall

Ever since I watched Sense8 I’ve had this nagging feeling that actor Max Riemelt, who plays Wolfgang on the show, looks like someone who’d be amazing playing a gay character. So, I went through his filmography and fell in love with Free Fall!

Free Fall (or Freier Fall) is a German drama-film that was released in 2013. It stars Hanno Koffler as Marc Borgman, a young police officer who falls in love with Kay Engel (Riemelt). The film shows Marc’s journey as he tries to maintain a relationship with Kay while keeping it a secret from his pregnant girlfriend, Bettina.

Having read the premise of the story, I knew it wasn’t going to be a happy film, but I still kept watching because I wanted to see how Germans handled homosexuality in movies. I watched the whole thing in one sitting and didn’t want it to end. The story had me hooked from the moment it showed Marc and Kay training at the Police Academy.

At first Marc didn’t like Kay flirting with him. They even got into a physical altercation once, but the two steadily moved closer to one another as the story progressed. I did feel bad for Bettina, though. She clearly loved Marc and seeing him becoming distant really took a toll on her.

I kept wondering who Marc will choose throughout the story. Will be stay with Bettina and his child or will he start a new life with Kay? Considering it’s a sad film you can be sure that Marc’s decisions don’t work out for him in the end.

Free Fall is a movie that shines light on how a person can end up destroying their life if he or she isn’t true to themselves as well as to the people around them. Marc’s hesitation to accept he was gay was the reason his whole world crashed. If he had acted sooner he might not have caused as much heartbreak as he did. The final scenes did show there was still hope for Marc. I think it told the viewers he had accepted who he really was and would make the right decisions in the future.

Free Fall can be compared to Brokeback Mountain. It showed a character stuck between his duties to his girlfriend and child, and his love for another man. Marc did feel similar to Ennis Del Mar to me because of the hesitation he felt throughout the story.

The only thing I didn’t like about the film was Marc and Kay’s use of the words referring to the female sexual organ as demeaning terms related to weakness, even though it was meant as a joke. I really don’t get why some people (both men and women) like associating being a female to being weak. It’s the 21^st Century and we need to be better than that.

Free Fall is definitely a film you should all check out, especially if you’re a fan of Max Riemelt and want to see him making out with another dude, or if you want to enjoy a fine piece of gay cinema that implores the audience to be true about their sexuality.

Have you watched Free Fall? What did you think of it? Let us know!

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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