Summary
Mia sits in a cafe sending out email invites to her one-woman show. She leaves a voicemail for Sebastian; she doesn’t even know which state he’s in and she hasn’t heard from him for a while. When she gets home Sebastian is already there, having prepared her a surprise home-cooked meal. He asks her to join him on tour in Boise the next day but she explains she has to stay home to rehearse. It seems that life isn’t going to get easier in terms of them seeing each other - Sebastian isn’t going to be "done" with his band any time soon. Mia points out that he was going to join the band to earn money so that he could set up his club, not so he could spend years touring. He gets defensive and says that no one likes jazz. It turns into a fight. He proclaims that "it’s time to grow up." The fire alarm in the kitchen goes off and Mia leaves.
It’s the night of Mia’s one-woman show, and Sebastian is about to set off to see her, when he’s told he has to stay behind with the band for a photoshoot. Hardly anyone turns up to Mia’s performance and she’s devastated at the end when the seat reserved for Sebastian is empty. In the meantime Sebastian is being given instructions by the photographer to "bite his lip" and look "moody." He’s asked to play something, anything he’d like, while they’re photographing him and he nostalgically starts the first notes of "Mia & Sebastian's Theme."
Sebastian turns up after the show to find Mia, and she’s deeply upset. She ends the relationship, and tells him she’s heading off to her parents in Boulder City where she can go back to school and forget about acting: she’s "done embarrassing herself."
Back at home, Mia sits in her old room surrounded by pictures and awards from her early theatre experiences at school. Elsewhere, Sebastian plays at his sister’s wedding. Sebastian gets a call: it’s a casting director wanting to track Mia down for a film audition. He goes to find her at home in Boulder City and tells her the news, but she doesn’t want to set herself up for rejection again. Sebastian is appalled, won’t take no for an answer, and tells her he’ll pick her up at 8am the next morning to take her to the audition.
The next morning they set off. This audition is different from others we have seen previously. The film she’s going up for shoots in Paris and the character will be built around the actress. All they want in the audition is for her to tell them a story. She begins to tell them about her aunt who lived in Paris, and so begins the song "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)."
Sebastian and Mia sit together and discuss their future. They decide that if (or when, as Sebastian says) she gets her film she needs to dedicate everything to it, while he needs to get his own thing going. Here is the fork in the road. They are on their own paths, even though they say they will always love each other.
Analysis
The energy and excitement of the concert at the end of "Summer" is literally and metaphorically cut short by the new season, and fall doesn’t bode well for this couple or the heights they’ve reached in their relationship. In fact it suggests that the only direction for them is down. In the opening shot of "Fall" we see Mia, close up, looking pensive, and we hear what's either the sound of wind in the background, or the sound of cars—in any case things outside are moving, and the atmosphere it gives is unsettling as she sits still waiting to press send on her one-woman show invites.
When Sebastian surprises Mia with dinner, the green lighting reminds us of their duet in ‘Summer’ by the piano. Unfortunately this time, life has shifted.
Contrast between the soft colors of Mia’s one-woman show and the brash lighting and vivid colors of Sebastian's photoshoot. They are both performing, but only Mia is expressing something of her own and Sebastian is—again—being told what to do. Despite the fact that on the surface it looks as though he’s doing better, Mia’s the one who’s on track with her actual dream.
Mia’s show is about a girl who experiences her whole life from her bedroom. And in this section we see a lot of framing, as though we’re seeing Mia in a window, glimpsing a view of her new world.
The irony of course is that the one-woman show is called So Long Boulder City, and yet she heads straight back to Boulder City after the show.
The shot of Sebastian on his bed with the light pouring in feels unlike many of the previous shots of this room. There’s no color and no warmth to it. He is alone, and the blind on the window makes it look like a prison. When Sebastian tracks Mia down in Boulder City and honks his horn for her, it is interesting that she peers through the slats in the blinds, as though she is glimpsing a world out of her own personal prison—that there’s hope.
Mia is much more relaxed in this audition than any of the others as she’s able to be herself. The work comes from her and who she is, instead of having to put on a character or an act to impress. When Mia sings "Audition," all else around her fades and she is bathed in a spotlight. As we’ve seen before, the world disappears when Mia’s connected to something real—when she was in the restaurant with Greg, Sebastian’s jazz music took over and everything else dissolved, and when she first saw Sebastian playing he too was in a spotlight. Here nothing exists except her and the story she is telling.
When Mia and Sebastian talk after the audition they’re sitting looking out the same view they did the night when they first properly met each other. It’s broad daylight now, and there’s no dance number. This is a harsher reality and the fizz of romance seems out of reach for them.
