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SWALLOW
Director: Carlo Mirabella-Davis Cast: Haley Bennett, Austin Stowell, Elizabeth Marvel, David Rasche, Luna Lauren Velez, Denis O'Hare MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:34 Release Date: 3/6/20 (limited); 3/20/20 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 5, 2020 There's little denying that the central conceit of Swallow packs a visceral punch. The movie examines the life of a woman who becomes compelled to swallow things. It begins with a marble and just intensifies in increasingly discomforting ways. A pushpin is just the start of that escalation. The woman is Hunter (Haley Bennett), married to the wealthy son of a powerful businessman. Her husband Richie (Austin Stowell) has had everything handed to him, and in their relationship, he expects similar things. She takes care of the house and has dinner waiting for him when he comes home from a job his father Michael (David Rasche) gave him. When Hunter irons one of her husband's ties, we catch a glimpse of how even the slightest, accidental challenge to Richie's sense of entitlement can lead to anger and resentment. Soon, Hunter learns that she's pregnant, and Richie and his family start to give her more attention—most of it patronizing or with a sense of obligation. Going through a keepsake box, with the sounds of happy children in her head, Hunter puts a marble from her childhood in her mouth, swallows it, and can't help but smile. Writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis' movie is about control—how Hunter has none and, as we learn as her past is gradually revealed, has never had any over her own life. In the act of swallowing things and reclaiming them after they've passed through her digestive tract, Hunter at least has this level of control over something about her body, her life, and what she does with those things. The movie's horrific gimmick, though, is intrinsically at odds with this goal. Mirabella-Davis treats his central metaphor with such sickening realism—the gagging, the searching through the toilet, the blood—that we're kept at quite a distance from whatever symbolic meaning the conceit may possess. It's a potent metaphor, for sure, but in an entirely off-putting way. As belittling and demeaning as the family's response to her behavior may be, we understand it under the circumstances. Eventually, Swallow digs into Hunter's past for some kind of deep-seated explanation to her actions. By that point, the disgust and uneasiness, which result from seeing that behavior in such detail, overshadow our ability to sympathize with the character, beyond the physical pain through which she puts herself. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for language, some sexuality and disturbing behavior)
