Studio: IFC Films
Director: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Writer: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Producer: Mollye Asher, Mynette Louie, Carole Baraton, Frederic Fiore
Stars: Haley Bennett, Austin Stowell, Elizabeth Marvel, David Rasche, Denis O’Hare, Luna Velez, Zabryna Guevara, Laith Nakli, Babak Tafti, Nicole Kang
Review Score:
Summary:
A pregnant housewife develops a compulsion to swallow harmful objects while losing control of her life to her husband’s family.
Review:
It’s no accident that writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis ironically names “Swallow’s” featured femme Hunter. Anything but, Hunter symbolizes an auto-piloted Stepford Wife for the 21st century. Conditioned by dated social norms to see white-strip smiles and 2.5 children as an American family ideal, Hunter married into money without consciously realizing the psychologically damaging effects complacency would have on her receding personality.
Hunter’s husband Richie, also unsubtly named, proudly parades as a trust fund trophy to his wealthy parents Michael and Katherine. The biggest problem plaguing his comfortable life is finding a tie to match his shirt, since the one that works was accidentally ironed incorrectly by Hunter. Richie angrily vents his frustration directly at his immediately apologetic wife. Emotional issues are instead solved with cash. Buying a bracelet should straighten out Hunter when her troubles boil too hot for Richie to handle.
Hunter’s vacant routine of crushing virtual candies, fixing precisely plated dinners, and simply looking pretty at parties endures more suffocation after receiving a positive pregnancy test. Hunter doesn’t share Richie’s elation over a baby on the way for reasons revealed later. In the meantime, prospective motherhood invites further interference as Richie’s family makes plans without consulting Hunter or outright overlooks any words that emit from her lips.
Anxious for tactile feelings that allow her to exert some sliver of control over her body, Hunter develops the unusual disorder pica. Inexplicably fascinated by objects that escalate in size from a glass marble to an eyeglass screwdriver, with pushpins and batteries in between, Hunter begins swallowing inedible objects that turn into collectible trophies when she painfully passes them into the toilet. Items that don’t conveniently careen through her colon on the other hand, require emergency surgery while making Hunter even more vulnerable to the chastising condescension of Richie and his parents.
As evidenced by the main character names, “Swallow” carefully crafts its components so every detail contributes to a precisely envisioned world. Production design and camera placement alone account for as many thematic metaphors as exist in the stripped script’s subtext.
You’ll never notice a canted angle in “Swallow.” The camera remains strictly level at all times so the vertical lines of room corners and cabinetry that exist in every scene keep Hunter imprisoned by bars. Some glass windows and clear balcony plates have no molded frames at all, keeping Hunter confined by invisible walls that still find ways to surround her. Panoramic shots purposefully present an austere atmosphere dominated by obsessive order to complement Hunter’s compulsive disorder.
“Swallow” mixes sterile mood with a “character study,” depending on your definition of that term. Can a film still be considered a character study if most of what we are studying is someone emptily staring in silence?
Haley Bennett definitely does the work to create a quietly regressed woman trapped in figurative plasticity. Childlike postures on her therapist’s couch, wide eyes flipping from welled tears to deluded wonderment, and fully physical anxiety attacks are just three of two-dozen tools in Bennett’s box for serving the sentence of a person perpetually haunted by subservient acquiescence.
But how much do you want to see of her dealing with inner turmoil by being alone in deep thought? Probably not 94 minutes worth. That length alienates attention spans from connecting to Hunter’s characterization as she becomes too much of a caricature and not enough of a sympathetic surrogate everyone can relate with.
At a certain point, “Swallow” drinks so much of its own arty Kool-Aid that the setting skews too far sideways and its population turns into people from bizarro “Pleasantville.” Taking implied horror with the seriousness it deserves becomes a secondary concern for the film’s fiction, resulting in a recommendation that the audience treat it that way too.
Singular scenes salvage some of “Swallow’s” slowness. Even though he only appears for a few minutes and his dialogue comes couched in cryptic similes, Denis O’Hare makes prime use of his one scene to have a tense confrontation with Bennett’s Hunter that reminds viewers to sit up straight. Elizabeth Marvel coldly chews on passive-aggressive humiliation to entertainingly undercut Hunter as her disapproving mother-in-law. Acting is unilaterally excellent, although it underwhelms when underwritten material only permits performances to stand, sit, or stare while the movie frustratingly “explores space” with one leg longer than the other.
“Swallow” has something to say about gender roles, adaptable identities, mental illness, and more. Trouble is, viewers are tasked with saying it themselves since the film frequently gets caught up in cinematic craft more than it does in substantive storytelling.
Review Score: 50
Everyone else who has no problem with a fright flick that feels like “Lizzie McGuire” decided to get dark with a PG-13 Halloween special should do just fine.