Swallow (2019)

Swallow (2019)
Directed by: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Written by: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Starring: Austin Stowell, Denis O'Hare, Haley Bennett

SWALLOW
Directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis

Reduced to an elevator pitch, Swallow may sound like Butt Boy’s sister flick: same compulsion, different entrance. In their own way, each also looks at the role of personal control in recovery. However, this is where the similarities end. Where Butt Boy is a gross-out comedy, meets film noir, Swallow is a thoughtful character study with moments of deeply uncomfortable body horror. And another worthy entry into the growing subgenre of flicks about women unravelling.

Hunter (Bennett) has a life that looks ideal from the outside, with a beautiful house, a baby on the way and a husband who “saved” her from a monotonous life working retail. It’s not her own life, though. Every aspect is decided for her, and she spends it inside her glass cage of a home, making everything look superficially just right: food, bedsheets and clothes. Heck, even the games she plays on her mobile are about putting things in the right place. She’s estranged from her family and has no close friends, so just spends most of her time waiting on her managing-director husband Richie (Stowell) to come home – only for him to ignore her at dinner for his work phone. It’s a credit to Stowell that he finds the layers in him: a guy who maybe loves her, but has no interest in listening to her (best shown when he picks up the phone to her crying, only to monologue). Because she’s not there for that – she’s there to be a “giving” and “selfless” source of inspiration and, occasional, sexual intercourse. Hunter is less his teammate than a supporting character in his life.

There’s also his quietly aggressive parents, who drop by to tell Hunter how to make their son happy and unironically give her a self-help book recommending she try new things. It starts with Hunter chewing ice in a restaurant, after getting interrupted one too many times, before moving on to a marble. She passes it intact without any pain. Unknown to her at this stage, she is displaying signs of pica: an eating disorder during which people eat things not usually considered food, or with no nutritional value. She soon moves on to larger, more dangerous items, like thumbtacks and figurines, which she displays like trophies on their way out. However, some things get stuck, and a scan on her foetus reveals some unexpected items in her stomach. I’ll leave the synopsis there as I don’t like going beyond the first half-hour or so. Suffice to say her controlling husband and his parents have ideas about how to deal with Hunter’s mental health.

Numerous horror films have explored pregnancy: playing up how soon to be mothers’ bodies physically transform. Swallow isn’t really about the physical process, per se. Instead, Hunter’s embryo is another blight on her independence, reducing her to the part of an incubator for the family heir. In that respect, the film is about her fighting for ownership and freedom of her life and body. This feeling of powerlessness, the film suggests, underlies the swallowing. Horror has handled eating disorders too – most memorably in Raw – though I have never seen one deal with it as frankly as Swallow. The scenes in which she takes in the items are hard to watch, even if we never know the harm they do to her innards, and her guttural noises during the painful moments afterwards are tough to listen to. I was not entirely sold on Bennett’s performance since I found some of her guarded “sweet homemaker” scenes sounded too sarcastic (I should add that she won Best Actress at Tribeca, so don’t take my word for it). However, when she isn’t meant to be holding back, she gets into the physicality of her role and bestows it with an energy and intensity, which makes you feel it.

It helps that Hunter’s a strong and very multi-layered character. Interestingly, her having pica isn’t only played for sympathy since it also stands for her emancipation. Hence viewers may feel conflicted since it’s tough to know what a satisfying ending could even be. Do we want to see her kick her harmful habit and become an obedient little baby-maker? Or do we want to see her continue to take control even if it hurts her? It’s an interesting dilemma. Fortunately, without spoiling things, there’s a brave ending that I think will infuriate a lot of the audience. Yet some of the steps to get there are questionable. It’s admirable that Swallow integrates the theme of personal control into all aspects of the script and presentation – down to the contrast between warm pink colours and clinical greys. Nonetheless, I wonder if writer/ director Carlo Mirabella-Davis explores it from too many angles. At times the psychotherapy scenes, Hunter’s only space to speak uninterrupted, are on the nose. A subplot about her parentage is also rushed and rests on an, at best, clumsy parallel.

Still, it culminates in what’ll surely be one of the most affecting final shots of the year. A transcendent moment, in a place you wouldn’t necessarily expect it, that calls for us to listen to not just Hunter’s story, but many others like her. Lately, we’ve had several horrors look at how social pressures necessitate women’s problems, or the struggles behind their surface perfection, are hidden – most recently the literal approach of The Invisible Man. Swallow fits into this tradition nicely. You could have more fun watching a man obsessively stuff things up his ass, though I think this one will be more rewarding. If harder to digest.

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