General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Falling for Figaro

Falling for Figaro is a 2021 romantic comedy directed by Ben Lewin, in which a London fund manager named Millie quits her job and leaves her long-term boyfriend to train as an opera singer in the Scottish Highlands under a fearsome former diva, competing for the "Singer of Renown" contest while falling for her rival student.¹ It stars Danielle Macdonald, Joanna Lumley, and Hugh Skinner, with Gary Lewis and Shazad Latif in supporting roles.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Ben Lewin, co-written with Allen Palmer¹
Cast	Danielle Macdonald (Millie), Joanna Lumley (Meghan Geoffrey-Bishop), Hugh Skinner (Max), Gary Lewis, Shazad Latif¹
Release	October 1, 2021, limited theatrical and streaming; distributed by IFC Films¹
Runtime and rating	1h 45m; not rated (NR) in the United States¹^•²
Box office	$35.8K gross in the United States¹
Reception	73% Tomatometer (26 reviews) and 69% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; Metascore 51 on Metacritic; 6.5/10 on IMDb¹^•³
Production	Australian/Scottish co-production co-funded by Screen Australia and Screen Scotland, shot mostly in Scotland⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Millie Cantwell is a highly successful fund manager working in London, with her own apartment and a boyfriend who hired her. In the opening scene her boss offers her a major promotion; she declines, saying she is giving it all up to learn to be an opera singer.⁵ She ends her relationship with her long-term boyfriend and travels to the Scottish Highlands for intense vocal training with Meghan Geoffrey-Bishop, a renowned but fearsome singing teacher and former opera diva nicknamed the "Mad Diva".¹^•⁶

There she meets Max, another of Meghan's students training for the upcoming "Singer of Renown" contest, which he is attempting for the fourth time after three runner-up finishes; winning would open the door to a contract with a major opera company.¹^•⁷ The competition between Millie and Max gradually evolves into something different and deeper, played out in the duets they sing together.¹^•⁷ Max competes with an aria chosen from The Marriage of Figaro, the Mozart opera from which the film takes its title.⁷

Production

The project was announced in October 2019 as a co-production between Screen Scotland and Screen Australia, with filming in Scotland set to begin the following month and post-production to be completed in Australia.⁸ Producer Judi Levine, Lewin's regular collaborator and wife, said the film at one stage risked bypassing cinema release because of Covid uncertainty, and that she was relieved it waited for theaters.⁹

Script development. Allen Palmer's original screenplay was set in Australia and structured as an ensemble piece about a small village, with the opera element as a side story and less of a romance. Lewin reworked it around three strong central characters and a stronger romance, keeping Palmer's basic premise of a young woman leaving the big city for an opera competition.⁹

Casting and singing. Levine proposed Danielle Macdonald after seeing her in Dumplin' and Patti Cake$, and the filmmakers did not feel they were casting against type, noting that opera singers vary widely in appearance. Joanna Lumley came aboard through a connection with an opera director friend; her husband, the conductor Stephen Barlow, vouched for the production team.⁹ Because the leads do not perform the arias themselves, the Melbourne singers Stacey Alleaume and Nathan Ley provided the singing voices for Millie and Max.⁴

A disrupted shoot. The Scottish shoot was cold and wet, and Lewin slipped and fractured his shoulder, so he directed the final ten days of production from a car, seated in the passenger seat with a monitor set up beside it while Levine drove him between exterior locations. On crutches from a childhood bout of polio, he had cast members walk to him to talk.⁹

Release and reception

IFC Films released the film in limited theaters and on streaming on October 1, 2021.¹ It later streamed on AMC+, Sundance Now, and Philo, and became available to rent or buy on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home.²

Critical response was mixed to positive. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 73% Tomatometer from 26 reviews and a 69% audience score; Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 51, based on two positive and four mixed reviews with none negative.¹^•³ Reviewers repeatedly flagged the predictability of the story while crediting the performances: Variety's Guy Lodge called it a "corny, cute-enough carpe diem comedy" carried by a lovable ensemble, and RogerEbert.com's Roxana Hadadi wrote that Macdonald and Skinner inject chemistry into an underwritten pairing.³ Australian critics were warmer; David Stratton in The Australian gave it 3.5 of 5, writing that it gets by on excellent actors and a quietly subversive sense of humor, with Lumley stealing the show.¹ The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck was more negative, citing a formulaic storyline, sluggish pacing, and predictable gags.³

The film earned $35.8K at the United States box office.¹ In Australia it was released by Umbrella Entertainment on July 14, 2022.⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2019 to 2020 › Released in 2020

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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