Against the backdrop of insufferable domestic ennui, the soft-spoken former saleswoman and newlywed housewife, Hunter, is struggling to stretch the bars of her gilded cage, a lavish and immaculate modernist villa in New York, even though she seems to have it all. But, more and more, as sad Hunter tries, unsuccessfully, to meet her controlling family's expectations, compliance turns into submission, obedience transforms into obsession, and pica, a compulsive eating disorder, s... (Full plot summary below)
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Against the backdrop of insufferable domestic ennui, the soft-spoken former saleswoman and newlywed housewife, Hunter, is struggling to stretch the bars of her gilded cage, a lavish and immaculate modernist villa in New York, even though she seems to have it all. But, more and more, as sad Hunter tries, unsuccessfully, to meet her controlling family's expectations, compliance turns into submission, obedience transforms into obsession, and pica, a compulsive eating disorder, starts to take over. Now, swallowing non-nutritive objects and engaging in increasingly impossible tasks becomes Hunter's dangerous newfound addiction, and there's no telling how far she'll go to maintain a false and fleeting sense of power. Who can save Hunter from herself?
Leave your thoughts about Swallow.
| The PlaylistLena WilsonA staggering accomplishment in its storytelling, visuals, and performance. |
| Film ThreatLorry KiktaMirabella-Davis somehow perfectly captures a woman’s perspective on the twisted series of events that leads Hunter to where she lands by the end of the film. |
| RogerEbert.comJustine SmithSwallow draws on how feminine perfection can so often be associated with self-destructive behavior. |
| Austin ChronicleJenny NulfIt’s a film with women in mind, and one that does not judge their choices when it comes to the health of their own bodies and their own minds. |
| The Film StageJared MobarakInspired by his grandmother’s institutionalization for OCD and propelled by his own experiences having identified as both genders during his lifetime, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ fictional feature debut Swallow provides its lead an escape through pica. |
| Time OutGreer McNallyDenis O’Hare delivers a heart-stopping performance as Hunter’s unlikely father figure, but this is Bennett’s show. She is luminous and her journey from beautiful, broken housewife to clear-headed woman, grabbing handfuls of soil from a parking lot to snack on later, is thrilling. It’s a role you can imagine a young Isabelle Huppert playing, and there’s no higher praise than that. |
| Los Angeles TimesKimber MyersSwallow is difficult viewing at times, but it’s psychologically rich and always feels genuine, even in its gorgeously stylized approach to the interior life of its complex protagonist. |
| New York PostSara StewartBennett, who’s been largely off the radar for a while, is heartbreaking and, eventually, fierce as her character begins to crave change. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayBennett claims her own form of autonomy with the movie itself, which could be read as an actress’s decision to stop hoping for good scripts to arrive over the transom and make her own luck. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreThere’s a touch of “The Invisible Man” to this unsettling story of the misery of being married to a cruel control freak. But “Swallow,” for all its People Magazine psychoanalysis, is harrowing in different ways and gripping in its myopia. All Hunter has is this mania for “control” of one thing in her life — what she puts in her mouth. All we have is worry over her mental health, and discomfort in confronting it. |
