Carlos Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow lives somewhere in the woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown genre, but it ultimately treats its main character’s disorder as pure spectacle, and the exploration of her trauma is brief and reductive
Photo: IFC Films I’m usually not very squeamish, but I had to steel myself to watch all 90 minutes of Carlos Mirabella-Davis’s new film Swallow, which chronicles the mental breakdown of a newly pregnant housewife who develops a habit of eating dangerous objects — needles, batteries, thumbtacks, etc.
The tone of Swallow is taut and terrifying; it lives somewhere in the woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown genre and is aesthetically rich, colored in pinks and jade and china blue. But in spite of its drama and beauty, the film ultimately treats Hunter’s disorder as pure spectacle, and the exploration of her trauma is brief and reductive.
The film’s perfunctory, sensational treatment of Hunter’s diagnosis reminded me a little bit of that old TLC show My Strange Addiction. It ran in the 2010s and profiled “shocking addictions and obsessions!” by showcasing, reality-show style, people with dangerous compulsive habits. The subjects’ “addictions” usually involved imbibing substances and objects, ranging from glass to used diapers to a dead relative’s ashes.
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