Review: Swallow
Swallow has been on my radar since I saw the poster of Haley Bennett holding the thumbtack in front of her mouth. In general I’m a little desensitised due to how many films I’ve seen over the years so it’s all the more noticeable when a film does get a visceral reaction out of me and that poster got one. While overall the film itself wasn’t as graphic as I was expecting, it’s still an interesting and uncomfortable look at mental illness and emotional abuse that deserves a look in for those willing to take it.
Set in the outskirts of modern day New York, newly married housewife Hunter and her wealthy husband Richie are flushed with great news, Richie is set take over as CEO of his father’s company and Hunter is pregnant with their first child. But in the weeks afterwards Hunter starts to do something very strange, she starts finding inedible objects and has an unwavering desire to eat them, things like a marble, a chess piece, a thumbtack.
Faced with a disorder she doesn’t know about and a husband too closed off to care, Hunter’s actions slowly but surely become more frequent and more dangerous, forcing her to face up to her past traumas and the effect they’ve had over the control of her life.
This is a story with a lot more subtext than anything else, Hunter’s eating disorder is the primary focus but the situation surrounding why she’s doing this and what the eating represent is what carries the film. To my surprise they actual had Richie finding out about the disorder way sooner than I was expecting but this allowed them to open a new avenue with Richie’s subtle method of controlling and gaslighting, I’m actually reminded a lot of The Invisible Man remake with regards to how it portrays emotionally abusive relationships. I don’t want to reveal too much more but suffice to say there’s a thematic connection between Hunter’s shitty marriage, her pregnancy and her eating disorder which, once I made the connection, made me enjoy the film that much more for tying it all together.
Acting was solid although this is clearly Haley Bennett’s film and she wipes the floor with everyone but that doesn’t mean everyone else is forgotten about, Austin Stowell makes for a great prick as Richie, right from his first scene where he’s pushing Hunter to tell an embarrassing story then interrupting her while she’s telling it sets the tone and he doesn’t improve. While he never hits Hunter he does get angry quite a bit, blaming her for anything simple she gets wrong and often gaslighting her into thinking its her fault, even after learning about Hunter’s working class upbringing it still leaves you wondering why these two are together.
His parents are just as bad, never mean or outwardly abusive but snide and controlling all the same, mother Catherine only focuses on the baby and never how Hunter herself is doing since all she cares about is her grandchild and that’s all Hunter is good for while father Michael is uncaring, uninterested and just as bad – if not worse – as his son for interruptions. The only good member of the family isn’t even a member of the family, Syrian refugee Luay is initially sent to guard Hunter and keep an eye on her disorder but the more he sees of her, the more he sympathises with her situation.
But this is Hunter’s film and Haley Bennett quietly snatches it away from everyone without even trying, instantly you can see she’s made up to look like a 1950s Stepford wife, all big blonde hair and a pretty face and nothing else matters, Hunter is a woman who’s lost agency of herself and is clearly struggling to get it back. During the aforementioned scene where Richie is forcing her to retell an embarrassing story you can see the pleading on Bennett’s face as Hunter silently begs him to stop without being able to make a scene in the restaurant and much like Richie, the tone is set for who Hunter is. What’s clear earliest of all is just how easily Bennett can get you to sympathise with her, she did something similar in Girl On The Train with a similarly disturbed character and Hunter is much the same and a large part of it is because you’re given a good look into Hunter’s background, her religious mother, her father who I won’t get into for spoilers, her working class background leading into her upper-class lifestyle, Hunter’s never had any say in any aspect of her life and now she’s pregnant with a man who can’t even let her finish a story. Every time something happens to remind Hunter that she’s nothing more than a housewife and a would-be mother Bennett just gets this look of pain and confusion on her face that you can’t help but feel torn by, like she’s reverting to a lost little girl, wondering why she can’t let herself stand up for herself.
And that’s when the eating begins. Like I said this isn’t as graphic as I was expecting but that doesn’t take away from how uncomfortable you get watching Hunter put these things in her mouth, and fair play to Haley, she gives Hunter that sense of determination, that this is her way of taking control back into her life. Obviously this disorder – known officially as Pica – is still very dangerous and the film doesn’t glamorise it, often having Hunter feel sick or worse afterwards, but it’s important to note how she’s been forced into that level of body autonomy, where she has to hurt herself to feel in charge of her own body, the same way self-harmers do, it’s an ugly situation and Hunter knows how dangerous it is to her and her baby, but she’s compelled to do it anyway because she feels like there’s no other choice to control her body. It’s a thoroughly disturbing mental illness but it’s still an illness and I congratulate the film and Bennett for being able to convey it so well, in hindsight the lack of graphicness was probably intentional so as to not make Hunter’s disease feel gratuitous.
This is also the directorial debut of Carlos Mirabella-Davis, and I’ll say for a first-timer he’s got some skill to him, obviously the Pica elements are naturally disturbing and make for some dangerous imaginations as your mind fills in the blanks but Davis has this way of pushing you in the right direction. It’s little things like the close-ups of Hunter placing the thumbtack on her tongue or the lingering shot of what she’s already eaten and expelled leaving you to wonder how in the hell did she swallow that. It’s unsettling but I like that Davis had the guts to make it so, part of me does wish he went a little bit further but that would’ve clashed with the softer tone of the film.
That’s something else to note, Davis use of colours, particularly pastels and primary colours because there’s quite a number of them and they give them a film a gentler exterior to hide it’s dark and ugly core. The pastels are put in place quite well, particularly with Richie and his family since they have to show off all their goddamn money so every scene with them is over-designed to within an inch of its life, set up to be pitch-fucking-perfect but going too far and ending up as disturbing, each muted scheme crying out for some form of life in this sterile, joyless void of richness. The primary colours are a little more interesting, there’s quite a few scenes where red, blue and/or yellow punctuate the scene with something more vibrant, usually with something innocuous, a window shade, a car, a birthday cake, but always noticeable. Perhaps a thematic connection to Hunter and trying to find the root of her illness with primary colours being the root of all colours going forward, or maybe just a stylistic connection to Rosemary’s Baby, given the two have a few shared themes.
What Davis shows most impressively of all is his ability to thread those themes into a solid narrative, I don’t think it’s perfect, for as soft as the film portrays itself I was waiting for the big ‘umph’ moment, like Justine finding her sister the morning after in Raw or Mary’s revenge on her attacker in American Mary, and it never really came. There’s a couple scenes at the end which could be considered that, both of them cathartic in their own way, but never really sticking the landing like they should. But that shouldn’t take away from what Davis builds up beforehand, like I said at the start the connection between Hunter’s Pica and her pregnancy adds a new layer to everything that just makes Hunter that much more tragic a character but I still like that Davis tied the two together. Pregnancy is a tough time for a woman and given how Hunter and Richie are towards each other it’s clearly not planned, it’s another instance of Hunter’s lack of autonomy where she’s almost being forced to carry this foreign object in her stomach because that’s what’s expected of her, the Pica feels like Hunter’s way of being in control of that by choosing what foreign objects she puts into her stomach.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call the film feminist but I do think it uses it’s psychological body horror skin to cover a female-centric storyline and warning of mental-illness.
It might have started with a poster but Swallow more or less delivered for me, maybe a little too soft for its own good about some heavy subjects but a solid effort nonetheless, the story took interesting directions that I appreciated, the acting was solid with Haley Bennett hopefully making her case as a name to look out for with her damaged but sympathetic Hunter and Davis stakes his claim as a brave new director with an eye for colourful danger and unflinching, uncomfortable viewing designed for to get a reaction.
7.5/10