Swimmer

...or a poem. disturbing, strange, seductive. for cultural references. landscapes. music. photography . and the feeling growing up scene by scene. a film of a travel. across waters. or memory. or time. short, a film who must see. not for a precise reason. but for a state. who could be. useful.

Seen as part of the London 2012 Festival programme of four short films, together with Max and Dania's What If?, Asif Kapadia's The Odyssey and Mike Leigh's A Running Jump.

Marvel as a swimmer's arm breaks the water, sending out a cascade of shiny droplets. Watch the reed-beds drift by in artful black and white. Hear fragments from British films of years long gone by. Lynne's Ramsay's film is one of those shorts which just isn't short enough. With no discernible narrative and far too much lingering on the play of light on water, The Swimmer is a reminder that however dull going for a swim at your local pool may be, sometimes doing lengths can still be a more interesting way to spend time than being sat in a cinema.

If this had been a 5 minute loop in a room at the Tate Modern, the visuals would have been enough to justify its existence. Stretched to a half hour film, the best I can say is it offers an opportunity to snooze in between the other three far more interesting films it's showing with.

Very arty, yes, but somehow captures the imagination - not least to wonder what its trying to say. The use of snippets of music and dialogue from a number of British films of the past 50 or so years - from the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Lord of the Flies, and Walkabout and even perhaps Master and Commander ("Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis") sets up that slightly disturbing feeling of vague recognition and hunting around in the memory.

When coupled with the images it creates a dream-like state, with hints of things half-seen, half-heard and half-remembered. A dream that goes from calm to nightmare to arrival and awakening?

Others may be another interpretation entirely.

Though this film by Ramsay is undeniably Ramsay in stylistically. It is conservative in places, perhaps this is attributed to the fact that the film is a branded film for London Olympics. Though, this takes nothing away from its meditative, visceral trance-like tone. The sound is extraordinary, perfectly timed and lifting the film characteristically. It is beautifully composed and shot. It is merit to the director that she was able to conceive a film which is utterly her own whilst offering a conservative commercial audience a palatable cinema.

Lynne Ramsay does a great job here of taking the subject of swimming and making it interesting, something that could have been boring and monotonous in the wrong hands. The visuals and cinematography are on form and the black and white works well.

6/10