Swallow

I was weirdly taken with this movie. Reading the description, I was pretty hesitant about actually watching it but I'm so glad I did.

Swallow is a slow, ponderous, captivating and cringe-inducing story of a woman who's life is slowly unraveling when she finds that lap of luxury she's lovingly married into turns out to actually be a stifling gilded cage.

The psychological turmoil that Bennett portrays was really subtle and moving. We don't get a string of explanatory diatribes, we get her performance and it absolutely works.

This is hard to watch at times though. Our lead character does love up to the title. She swallows things. Things that shouldn't be swallowed and it's hard to watch but I found it incredibly effective.

Swallow is wonderful example of slowly building psychological distress and simultaneously a display of Bennett's skill. This is going to be a really unpleasant experience for a lot of people but if you can appreciate the exploration of the psyche then you may just enjoy the journey this takes you on.

Like another reviewer I imagined this was going to be about Pill addiction - a glimpse at the poster, the only thing I allowed myself or rather couldn't avoid seeing - other than that I did not read anything about the movie. So that looked like a pill thing ... and it turned out this is a different beast.

Now I imagine that most people who want to watch it (and of course those who already have) read up on the plot and are not like me avoiding any information at all costs. So you don't need me to tell you anything about that. What I will tell you, is that the movie is quite the tough and harrowing watch. And all the focus lies on the main female character. Everyone else is quite flat from a character standpoint. A bodyguard sort of type may have the most personality of them all.

But that did not make the movie any less intriguing. And while it seems impossible to have any sort of final resolution here ... you may agree with how the movie decides to end ... even if most likely you may not be able to really get a grip on everything she goes through, we do feel for her ...

An extremely self-aware A-to-Z psychological thriller about taking back your life through rituals of control, complete with patriarchal caricatures and metaphors of intrusion left and right (think Aronofsky's "mother!"--but a dark comedy).

Approaches the level of Snakes on a Plane or Teeth on self-aware high-concept absurdity, yet manages to be taken seriously thanks to a great performance by lead actress Haley Bennett, lush cinematography, and a constant stream of creative ways to push the autonomy message over the top (the first frames of the film are close-ups of farm-to-plate preparation of lamb meat).

Swallow is destined to be a cult-classic. It's the quintessentially bold, fun, and unique indie film festival offering (Anna and the Apocalypse was that film for me last year).

Highly recommended, but not for the squeamish.

On the plus side this is a well-made movie and the location on the Hudson River above NYC is very picturesque. For me the main reason to enjoy this movie is the performance of Haley Bennett as the afflicted young wife, Hunter. She is really good in the role.

There is a malady called "pica" and if you look it up you'll find all those things depicted in this story, eating ice, swallowing metallic objects, eating paper, eating dirt, etc. The story attempts to tie Hunter's behavior to aspects of her birth and upbringing, and includes some sessions with a therapist, but the sum of its parts is muddled. We see the story arc but it does not tie up neatly into a whole story.

Hunter's new husband is the son of a very wealthy family and he himself is head of a corporation. The whole family, son, dad, mom, treat Hunter as a curiosity, a mystery to be solved, dictating what she should do, even forcing her to have a male nurse follow her at home 24/7 to make sure she quits swallowing things that might yet again send her to the hospital.

Naturally she reaches a breaking point and has to get out of the situation, but where does she go from there?

A moderately interesting movie, I watched it at home on DVD from my public library, my wife skipped.

Originality within the bounds of reality is a rare achievement in film or cinema these days. Haley Bennett leaves us under no illusion of the psychological strain her past and present circumstances have had and are having on her. Tormented in so many ways as so many people are in these confusing, evolving and ever changing times - our hunter gatherer minds can find all that's thrown their way a little tricky to wash down, but there are ways to compensate.