Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2020)

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Mr Sausage
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Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2020)

#1 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:13 pm

Seen at the Fantasia Film Festival:

A new wife, pretty, quiet, dolled up, living in a pristine dream home, contemplates a marble: the way the light glints off it, how cool and smooth it is in her fingers, how nice it feels—and then pops it in her mouth and swallows it. Soon come other objects: dice, jacks, a battery, a pin, and her life begins to spiral out of control. Therapists, care takers, and an increasing isolation under her controlling parents-in-law drives her to despair. This was a darling of the festival; it seemed like in every screening I heard critics and audience members listing it as their favourite of the festival. It’s easy to see why: it takes a specific and unusual situation and renders the emotions behind it clearly, with sympathy, and without judgement. But while I shared their enjoyment, I couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm. I think the film is let down by its bluntness in attributing cause. The movie is straghtforwardly feminist, and persuasive in its feminism: you leave the film with a good understanding of how it feels to be dominated and rendered powerless by social roles and expectations, and how that can result in extreme physical forms of asserting control. But however clear-sighted and persuasive it is on these points, the film’s ideological commitment is stifling and comes at the cost of ambiguity. Something that is most powerful for being inexplicable, obsession and mental illness, is rendered too explicable. The mysteries of the human psyche are fully explained in political terms, which in practise means reduced to the terms of an argument. So it’s not as strong as In My Skin, a film it superficially resembles, because that latter movie, in addition to being horrifying and unsafe, suggested unreachable depths within its heroine: you felt both that things could be explained and that you could never learn enough or go deep enough to untangle the threads. I can’t love Swallow because I prefer dramatic and psychological complexity to ideological simplification. But the film is so good at getting inside the emotions of its heroine and following the logic it sets for itself that I don’t hesitate to recommend it. It has strengths worth experiencing.

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domino harvey
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Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#2 Post by domino harvey » Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:19 pm

Your description of Swallow’s extreme pica as feminist parallel makes it sound like an inverse of Margaret Atwood’s the Edible Woman, wherein there instead of everything the protagonist responds to oppressive factors by not being able to eat anything

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Mr Sausage
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Re: The Films of 2019

#3 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:27 pm

Huh. I wonder if it was an influence.

Tho' I suspect the ultimate origin (probably of Atwood's novel too) is The Yellow Wallpaper.

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domino harvey
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#4 Post by domino harvey » Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:36 pm

Hmm, I hadn't made the connection in my mind, though Atwood's novel certainly contains a degree of the symbolic madness present in CPG's story. Then again, "the Yellow Wallpaper" is almost surely a default foundational work for all feminist lit of this nature that has come after it

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zedz
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#5 Post by zedz » Wed Aug 14, 2019 4:10 pm

The film Matteo Garrone made before Gomorra, Primo Amore, seems to belong to the same lineage. Some Italian arsehole (maybe I'm forgetting certain details here) moves his new partner into an isolated house and bullies her into anorexia. I found it extremely unpleasant, but it's proved to be perversely memorable (even if I couldn't remember what the film was called for many years).

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#6 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Aug 14, 2019 4:53 pm

To keep this going, Han Kang’s novel, The Vegetarian, was translated from the Korean a few years ago and made an impression among lit types. It involves a woman who responds to the patriarchal, repressive aspects of South Korean society by suddenly becoming vegetarian, which it seems is a much more radical act in Korea than the west. It fits the mould of women responding to patriarchy by becoming restrictive and self-controlling in an unhealthy way. It’s a good book, too.

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domino harvey
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#7 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jan 28, 2020 1:04 am

I’m not sure it’s Criterion material, but IFC picked this up

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The Curious Sofa
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#8 Post by The Curious Sofa » Sun Mar 22, 2020 3:38 am

This plays like the idiot's version of Todd Haines Safe, with everything clumsily spelled out (and rooted in a dramatically convenient childhood trauma) where Safe lets you fill in the blanks. At one point the heroine even verbalises that her transgressive actions make her feel in control, just in case we didn't get it. The husband, his family, his friends, his co-workers, all are nothing but hissable villains, purely there to undermine the lead character, with no inner lives themselves. What's left is style, which comes down to promotional material that looks good on instagram, a contemporary hipster version of a candy colored Doris Day comedy. A shallow calling card film, riding the wave of a hot-button topic without nuance or depth.

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swo17
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#9 Post by swo17 » Fri Dec 03, 2021 3:05 am

The criticisms above are certainly valid (in particular, I wish the husband had been left more ambiguously villainous) but the focus on pica feels novel, and Haley Bennett is simply mesmerizing in the lead role, relaying through her general remove an entire backstory of trauma that's more satisfying than the one actually explained by the film. Come to think of it, I vaguely recall being impressed by her in Rules Don't Apply as well. (Hopefully for being a good actress and not just for being hot.) Apparently I've also seen her in Kaboom but that one's hazy in the memory. And I see she was recently in Hillbilly Elegy...so her versatility at large will forever remain unknown

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domino harvey
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#10 Post by domino harvey » Fri Dec 03, 2021 3:51 am

Real fans know her from the cover of one of my yearly mixes

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swo17
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#11 Post by swo17 » Fri Dec 03, 2021 6:58 am

*gulp*

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#12 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Dec 03, 2021 7:57 am

swo17 wrote:(in particular, I wish the husband had been left more ambiguously villainous)
Yeah, the film was doing that for the longest time, and I appreciated how he wasn't a bad person but an actor in a bad system, his evident care and concern, tho' genuinely felt, only serving to make the control and abuse of the parents seem more palatable and less easy to refuse. That's complex and interesting. But then they had to make him bellow "bitch" or "cunt" (I forget which) into the camera to show that really he was always an uncomplicated misogynist, and I was disappointed. Mirrored my disappointment with how ideologically determined the story is. Plenty of women face the kind of abuses shown here; few of them turn to pica. There's something inexplicable there, but the film doesn't seem to think so. Suggests the pica is purely symbolic and the filmmakers aren't especially interested in mental illness except for what it might represent.

Still a good movie, tho'.

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swo17
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#13 Post by swo17 » Fri Dec 03, 2021 10:53 am

SpoilerShow
It was the latter, accompanied by "I'm gonna hunt you down" as well as a reminder that she was robbing him of his baby. The threat that he would divorce her if she didn't commit herself to a mental hospital was no less cruel but a more believable illustration of the kind of thing a spouse would want to escape

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

#14 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue May 17, 2022 8:33 pm

Mr Sausage expressed my basic impressions of this one almost to a T, though I found my thoughts and feelings escalated from resigned irritation to flat-out hatred as it maneuvered through its final act, and I ultimately rejected its objectives for persuasion, or even its categorization as a feminist film. I guess I'll start with unspoiler-y reflections, or maybe what bothered me least to most. I don't know, I'll try to be coherent.

To press upon a point of discussion in the thread already, I didn't find the husband's character (if you can even call it that) ambiguous for any of the runtime. The filmmakers went to obnoxiously deliberate lengths to show him neglecting her worth in every respect from the start, and I didn't think they left space for a charitable reading that he was a spoke in the wheel of his family system. Though it's undeniably true, the artists here don't care one lick. The mental health concerns as secondary and streamlined was frustrating, though the film almost gets away with making this diagnostic simplicity reflexive of its protagonist's own (lack of a) grasp of her condition.
SpoilerShow
Hunter clearly has no actual idea of 'why' she has developed pica. She whittles it down to a way to get "control" and then later "a game," and I truly believe that she believes these responses of hers to be true. This would make for a fascinating portrayal if the filmmakers had either ventured full-tilt into her mental state to dish up a blended state of delusion, or if they had taken steps to get some distance from aligning with their protagonist as a surrogate. Unfortunately, there's seemingly no interest in leaning into her intangible confusion toward her condition from a complexly empathetic stance, instead coasting on her Truth as blanket-factual with full-throated sincerity, solely because she's oppressed, even if the two can be mutually exclusive.

It's really disheartening and problematic, because there is an opportunity here to remain didactically feminist, exposing the very same issues, and also dig deeper into psychological powerlessness. The filmmakers would rather reduce everyone to caricatures to sell a superficially aesthetic sensation of powerlessness, which actually does its lead principal a disservice, and further marginalizes her by neglecting to provide attention to her defense mechanisms (failing to even posture at compassion for her construction of them) or care about the true state of her dysphoria outside of observational gawking disguised as empowering alliance.

As for some specific markers of vexation, well let's just go from least-offensive to most-offensive. I've seen some awful therapists in movies, but this one features perhaps the worst one of the bunch, who seems to be a kinda-sorta 'okay' two-dimensional archetype like the rest of the players during the sessions (though her visible discomfort and disengagement during Hunter's disclosure about her mother's rape and trauma response to it is absurd- that's a pretty mild thing to bring up, and instead of reinforcing a safe space and acknowledging the breakthrough, her reaction to Hunter's request to show her a relic is candid rejection!)- Though the kicker comes when the husband demands she break confidentiality, and the code of ethics is brushed aside after a five-second pause in favor of getting paid for the sessions (which would have happened anyways, because, uh, one gets paid for services- plus it doesn't look like this therapist is hurting financially given the look of her office and the wealth of her clientele)!

And.. what about the concerning use of a 'foreigner'-as-prop? What an inappropriate bit of stereotyping. This man is functioning as nothing more than a non-American who has seen warfare and minimizes the very real traumas and mental illnesses that middle-upper class white people authentically experience- again, without the awareness to weigh this as 'her' experience of invalidation, or posture into a darkly satirical space. No, it's given no dimensions: He's part of The Problem. The film winds up other'ing him because he's other'ing her; but it's okay because it's her story, as a woman...

But... is the film even a feminist one? Because it doesn't seem to be operating under even that internal logic. Rather it's an Everybody's Out to Get Me narrative that's followed through on with no artistic cognizance of the irony, or passive/active identification with the subjective nature of the film's interest, in framing the point of entry as congruous with narrative therapy. Everyone - whether the men, the elite, the foreigners, mental health providers, even her mother - contributes less to a feminist reading than one of endorsed self-pity, which suddenly and nonsensically transforms into a conclusion of liberation.

The brief phone call Hunter has with her mother is one of the key instances in the film that undercuts a strictly feminist reading of male vs. female abuse with prescriptive neglect. Her curt "There's just no room, doll" minimizes the husband's or his family's neglect as particularly troublesome in wielding patriarchal and (patriarchally-sourced) socioeconomic power over her, and this unveils an indication that the world is just unfair to her, reinforcing a core belief that she, specifically, is unlovable/unlikable as a human being. This is actually a much more interesting idea, though the film is as afraid as she is of going to these vulnerable places- and not by the design of mimicking her mental state.

The ultimate sloppy stumble into an empowering finish comes after a final confrontation with her father/mother's rapist, who himself oversimplifies his own intentions for rape as an attempt to feel like God, diluting the complexity of his psyche and nebulous motives in favor of a Men Want Power pronouncement, resulting in a mirroring 'revelation' for Hunter. The moment she questions whether or not she's like him is exactly the kind of thought-provoking question this film should be asking, or empathizing with her journey from avoidance to a space where she can ask that kind of question to herself! But it's cowardly brushed aside in a loud "No!" sans acidic satire, or glimmer of consciousness regarding Hunter's tragic return to arming herself with protective psychological parts left in the margins.
So, yeah, I hated this film; partially for its failure and unwillingness and unawareness to engage with its character in good faith, but also for its failure and unwillingness and unawareness to engage with its own central conceit in good faith. I love giving rope to films that utilize the possibilities of the medium to slyly adopt the defense mechanisms of its characters or own diagnostic formulations via technique and narrative form in metaphysical ways, but this film either didn't think to do that or has no interest in trying. However, I'm at a loss for what it's actually trying to accomplish at all, particularly after making multiple pivoting towards more universal psychological maladies in negative core beliefs during the final stretches... This reminded me of I Care a Lot's muddled half-measured negligences to connect with its protagonist or thematic material, but at least that film was pointedly a satire!

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