Swallow (2020)
dir. Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Rated: R
image: ©2020 IFC Films
There are perhaps three scenes in the film Swallow that actually achieve an emotional truth that resonated with me. They all feature the main character, Hunter, and her interactions with people trying to help her. Two of those scenes are between Hunter and her therapist. One takes place under a bed. Hunter has crawled under it to escape the world. Richie, Hunter’s husband, along with his parents, have hired Luay, a caretaker from Damascus, to look after Hunter. Luay crawls under the bed with her to make sure she’s alright and to keep her company. These scenes made me believe the connections between the characters within them.
The rest of the movie is filled with interactions I didn’t believe for a second. One of the worst examples is a scene between Hunter and her mother-in-law, Katherine. The two are sitting and talking in Hunter and Richie’s living room. Katherine asks what Hunter did for work before she met Richie, as if the two had never had a conversation.
The movie makes it clear that Hunter and Richie have been married for some time. Richie’s parents have bought them a house and at the start of the movie, the young couple discover they are expecting their first child. But each interaction between Hunter and Richie feels like perhaps they’ve just met. I never believed that any of the characters in Swallow had any sort of history with each other before the movie started. They’re all just ciphers who exist for writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis – in his fiction feature film debut – to explore his chosen themes.
Swallow chronicles Hunter’s development of pica disorder after she becomes pregnant. Pica is the psychological condition that causes a person to crave non-nutritive, non-food items like hair, metal, or dirt. Hunter starts with a marble. Things get considerably more painful – both for Hunter and for us – when she moves on to objects like a thumbtack and, near the end, a small screwdriver.
Mirabella-Davis doesn’t seem quite sure what he wants his movie to be. There’s a little transgressive horror here, the feel of a Hitchcockian mystery, a splash of domestic drama, all mixed with a healthy dose of psychological thriller.
Thus, we get an opening sequence which juxtaposes the slaughter of a lamb with a perfectly appointed and meticulously manicured home and an impeccable dinner (featuring that lamb). We’re just starting to think this might be a rumination on the hypocrisy of our food system, which hides its most unsavory parts, when Mirabella-Davis changes focus. We get scenes of Hunter, the poor little rich girl, whose perfect life isn’t so perfect after all. She whiles away her life in her gilded cage, vacuuming in pearls and getting dinner on the table at the precise minute Richie walks through the door, only to have him answering work emails and texts all through the meal as she sits in silence.
Notice I said emails and texts in that last sentence. Swallow isn’t, as the above paragraph might have you briefly believe, set in the 1960s, but in the present. And in that setting, Swallow’s commentary doesn’t seem particularly timely or relevant. It’s much more effective in a television series like Mad Men. For good measure, Swallow rips off one of that show’s plot developments when we discover that Hunter’s therapist discloses to Richie – breaking doctor-patient confidentiality – everything his wife tells her in their sessions.
The body horror of Swallow seems to be Mirabella-Davis’s real interest, and the way he handles it is a definite strength of the movie. The repulsion I felt upon seeing what Hunter puts into her body, and more importantly, how it must inevitably come out, was visceral, raw, and very real. Mirabella-Davis complements those scenes with a focus on sound design. The squirting of mustard onto a plate and sonogram gel onto Hunter’s belly were particularly memorable.
Haley Bennett’s performance as Hunter is singular. She gives the character an unpredictable, off-kilter quality. Her presence is the main reason I was able to find my way into Swallow as much as I did. Those few brief scenes that Hunter shares with her therapist that I described above particularly stand out.
Of the many different themes that Swallow raises and discards – to varying degrees of success – one of the most effective is that of having a secret that you can’t share even with those closest to you. We feel the shame and embarrassment – and, yes, in a few brief moments, joy, as is detailed in one montage – that Hunter lives with in pursuit of her strange and harmful new habit. The picture’s exploration of this theme is all too brief, however, before it moves on to something else.
It’s disappointing when Mirabella-Davis opts to trot out the tired rape trope in the third act as the underlying reason for Hunter’s deep-seated trauma. The movie switches gears again late in the movie – this time into domestic drama territory – when Hunter finally confronts the source of her psychological frailty. That confrontation feels cheap and unearned by the movie, a shortcut to catharsis.
Carlo Mirabella-Davis has style to burn and he puts that to effective use throughout Swallow. The production design, look, and feel of his movie are vivid and impeccable. It’s the inconsistent tone and poor character development that lets Swallow down.
Why it got 3 stars:
- It’s an interesting premise, and Carlo Mirabella-Davis has a brilliant cinematic eye, but almost every relationship in Swallow is unbelievable. The film also swings wildly between styles, so that it never develops a consistent tone.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- One of the tones that Swallow reaches for, then drops immediately, is that of a Hitchcockian thriller. In one scene, Richie’s mom, Katherine, tells Hunter that she should grow her hair out, because “Richie likes girls with long, beautiful hair.” She reaches out and touches Hunter’s hair as she says it. It’s a moment right out of Vertigo, and it’s executed well but, again, that one moment is never followed through on.
- What I call the “happy swallowing montage” is very well executed by Mirabella-Davis and his editor, Joe Murphy. There is an exuberance, mostly due to Haley Bennett’s performance and the song cue used for the montage, that is genuinely delightful.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Have you heard of the Coronavirus? The internet came to my rescue, and I was sent a screener link by the wonderful folks in charge of marketing for Swallow. I hooked my laptop up to my home theater set up and practiced social distancing from the rest of humanity.