Stepford Addictions: "Swallow" fascinating and confidently made with a fearless lead performance


Swallow (2020)
94 min.
Release Date: March 6, 2020 (Limited & VOD)

The meticulously controlled “Swallow” exudes so much confidence about itself and sensitive empathy for its subject who has no control over her own life. This bracing, assured narrative feature debut by writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis is one of the most extreme and queasily effective explorations of suburban marital ennui. Going one step further, it is an uncommonly strange character study that allows viewers to understand the compulsive disorder known as “pica.” In what could have very easily been gratuitous, judgmental, or exploitative, “Swallow” is anything but, instead intimately observing the cracking of a perfect, doting, subservient Stepford Wife, one marble and thumbtack at a time. Mirabella-Davis not only cements himself as a filmmaker to watch, but he extracts a captivating, beautifully modulated lead performance out of Haley Bennett (2016’s “The Girl on the Train”).

“I feel so lucky,” says blonde-bobbed housewife Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett), her words spoken as the truth or a lot of hot air. Like a bird in a cage, she lives an idyllic life in a glass house overlooking the Hudson River with her handsome, successful husband Richie (Austin Stowell). Hunter spends her days completing household duties, only taking time out to play Candy Crush on her phone before waiting for her husband to get home to her prepared dinner. Always needing reassurance from Richie that she makes him happy, Hunter is seen but not always heard; she’s cut off by her father-in-law, Michael (David Rasche), while telling a story she didn’t even want to tell in the first place, and her mother-in-law tells her to grow her hair out because Richie loves women with long hair. When Hunter gets pregnant, she starts living by the advice of a self-help pregnancy book given by her mother-in-law: do something unexpected each day and push yourself to try new things. One mundane day while straightening up the house, Hunter admires a set of decorative marbles. She wants to feel something—anything—and goes ahead, swallowing the marble and then, as her pregnancy goes and her newfound proclivities aren’t yet figured out, graduates to consuming (and eventually passing) sharper, potentially dangerous objects.

“Swallow” is brave and provocative, a feminist psychodrama about control, compulsion and bodily autonomy. The film compels not only from its fascinating subject matter but how it is told, suggesting its themes rather than explicitly spelling them out. Director Carlo Mirabella-Davis takes a patient, understated approach and cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi’s sharply composed visual eye, attention brought to splashes of color against the modern sterility of Hunter’s home. And then there’s Haley Bennett, who dives fearlessly into the blank-slate role of Hunter. She plays Hunter as a woman who is acting herself, putting on a happy face and employing her mother-in-law’s “fake it till you make it” expression. Bennett is exceptionally nuanced, her stillness so delicate and vulnerable and yet hiding Hunter's inner defiance and addiction that gives her agency. She is joined by Austin Stowell, a seemingly perfect specimen as Richie who begins to show his true colors; Elizabeth Marvel and David Rasche, as Hunter’s controlling in-laws Katherine and Michael; and in the film’s most compassionate role, Laith Nakli as Luay, the man Richie’s parents have hired to watch Hunter. In one chilling, unpredictable extended scene toward the end of the film, Denis O’Hare shows up and makes a lingering impression as Hunter’s biological father. Tough to take as it can be, “Swallow” is a disturbing yet unexpectedly human picture that’s even tougher to turn away from and stop thinking about.

Grade: B +

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