The Girl in a Swing

Alan Desland is a cultivated English bachelor who has taken over his family's antique porcelain business. On a business trip to Copenhagen, he meets and immediately falls in love with Karin, a stunning German beauty. After only a couple of weeks they marry, honeymoon, and settle into life in Alan's hometown. At first their erotically charged relationship seems like paradise, but this, of course, cannot last. Karin has told Alan virtually nothing of her past, and her dark secret eventually manifests with supernatural trappings and threatens everything.

"The Girl in a Swing" is based on the 1980 novel by Richard "Watership Down" Adams. The film has one thing going for it; the script does an admirable job of lining up and hitting a good number of the novel's main plot points and scenes. Otherwise, this overwrought melodrama has little to recommend it.

There is so much to criticize--from the passionless direction to the insipid soundtrack, awful costuming, and poor casting. Meg Tilly in the role of Karin is particularly troublesome. While she is a fairly attractive woman, she does not project the sort of unearthly eroticism that the character requires. Worse, her muddled, affected German accent obscures most of her dialogue. When Tilly isn't screeching "Alan!" she is mumbling and slurring her most important lines. Director Gordon Hessler does little to salvage things, as he opts to film most of the important supernatural and erotic sequences in one of two modes--either flat or melodramatic.

While very few films adapted from novels can attain the dense subtext of their source material, such a film might at least evoke the essence of the story by establishing a strong mood consistent with the novelist's vision. This film, however, aspires to nothing so worthy. It neither succeeds as an adaptation of Adams' complex novel nor as a worthy cinematic effort in its own right.