Sally Bauer, à contre-courant

A biographical movie meant to depict the heroic story of a woman's efforts swimming across the English Channel unfortunately falls flat.

From the opening sequence it becomes clear the filmmakers intention are not to focus on her hardship in achieving this feat but instead her troubled personal life as a single mother. Even though this intention is admirable, the result is a sluggish drama that never is able to engage the viewer.

The screenwriting is too weak and underdeveloped, failing to create a strong enough plot that creates any significant forward movement.

The good art direction and photography is nowhere near enough to make a great film.

It's a real shame that this filmmakers lacks the talent to grasp the importance of strong narrative, believing that lingering moments of glances and mood is sufficient.

Hire better screenwriters.

Its not proper to try to get away with saying its just based on a true story, when changing it so utterly and in the meantime struggeling to convince people that it basically is a true one by for instance using real figures and names. Changing the complete story to something that never happened and never explaing the background to anything is not good. Very annoying even when reading the actual background afterwards. For instance we never really get a good grip of why her friend committed suicide. The channelswim from England ought to be more of interest then the smaller one from Denmark etc. Sorry, good acting does not cover a bad story. The story was there but it was not used.