Sometimes relationships can be as confining and maddening as a prison sentence or a quarantine.
In Carlo Mirabella-Davis' narrative feature debut Swallow, newlywed Hunter (Haley Bennett, who also executive produced) finds an unorthodox way to deal with a stifling marriage to the son (Austin Stowell) of a corporate tycoon (David Rasche). She's proof that having your material needs met can be the first step toward misery.
She starts swallowing seemingly random household objects that are guaranteed to be found nowhere in a Keto, or any other diet plan.
Glass marbles aren't known for their antioxidants. As for the other objects that she consumes, you'll have to see the movie for yourself.
The director says Hunter's unusual dietary supplements are a way of dealing with a union that feels more like a conviction than a love story.
"Her job is to carry on the family's name and to be this augmentation to their son's life. She starts to see how much she's an ornament, like the objects she consumes. And the family is using her like a vessel. (Swallow) is about body autonomy and about claiming control over one's body as well," Mirabella-Davis explains.
Hunter cleans her Better Homes and Gardens dwelling dressed as if she's hosting a dinner party with visiting dignitaries in attendance. Not since Leave It to Beaver (a work of fiction), has anyone worn pearls and heels while operating a vacuum cleaner.
Mirabella-Davis says by phone from New York, "We wanted to convey the sense that Hunter feels this expectation from her husband and her husband's family that she must always be on display or that there's a formality to everything. She's not ever able to relax and to be herself. She's constantly performing. She's sort of curating the space to match their expectations.
"I think she realizes that's the place that she's in even though, on the surface, it looks like a wonderful place to be. Everyone is telling her this is what will make you happy. This is where you are. This is where you belong. She starts to see something lurking subcutaneously in the place and exerting control. Of course, she represses it and puts on a happy face, and her misgivings come out in the form of a compulsion."
While Swallow shifts between horror and black comedy, Hunter's condition is a real one. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, pica involves eating objects like dirt, paint chips or hair and can be dangerous. Parasites and bacteria from the dirt can be lethal.
Mirabella-Davis says that he got some of the inspiration for his tale from his own grandmother who had her own way of dealing with the ennui of being a housewife.
"My grandmother who was a homemaker in the 1950s in an unhappy marriage who developed obsessive hand washing. Her OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) took the form of constant sanitization of her hands in the home. I think she was looking for order in a life where she felt powerless," he says.
"I wanted to explore those themes with Hunter, as well, that idea of rituals of control and how they happen and when they happen. They put her in a mental institution where she was given electric shock therapy, insulin shock therapy and a non-consensual lobotomy, none of which cured her. There's a lot of great treatment that's out there for people who are living with those with OCD, and if you find the right person to help you through that treatment."
As an OCD patient myself, I can vouch for current treatments.
In addition, Mirabella-Davis has a unique angle on the unrealistic expectations for women in his film.
He has lived as one.
"I was raised as a cisgender man," he says. "My gender has always been kind of fluid. In my 20s, for about four and a half years, I identified as a woman. I wore women's clothing, and I had a different name ("Emma Goldman," after the 20th century radical). It was one of the most wonderful times in my life. It was also a wonderful time of creativity.
"It was also an education. If you're raised as a man, you don't always see how baked into the cake of society sexism is. Even just walking down the street was a real eye-opener. You get to see how society is constantly trying to control, observe, contain and marginalize female-identified people. That was an experience that helped solidify my feminist beliefs.
"It helped, but I've also lived most of my life as a man, so I was concerned with my male gaze affecting the film itself, so my producers, Mollye Asher and Mynette Louie, and I instead of ignoring the problem, which happens to the detriment of a lot of male directors, we decided to take it as a potential issue that could affect the story."
The bright but unsettling colors come from production designer Erin Magill, and Katelin Arizmendi's eerie cinematography gives the film a vibrant but off-putting glare. Fairly or unfairly, both of these jobs are usually handled by men on film sets.
Mirabella-Davis is also quick to credit Bennett, who played a tough frontier woman in the remake of The Magnificent Seven, for making Hunter seem like a flesh-and-blood person hiding behind a plastic Barbie doll mask.
"Haley is an incredible actor, and one of the hallmarks of an amazing actor is their ability to sort of inhabit different personas and transform their personalities to match that character," he says.
"One of the things that Haley is so good at is layers of emotion. Hunter wears multiple masks throughout the film. There's that first mask, sort of reflecting what her husband wants her to be, and then there's that second mask, which is her pain, her doubt. And then there's a third mask, which is her true self. Haley can give you all of those textures with just the twitch of her eye."
In addition to Bennett's emotional alchemy, Swallow works because it looks as if Hunter is really ingesting things that might injure her. It's tempting to ask Mirabella-Davis how Bennett has managed to stay healthy for other roles, but the normally forthcoming filmmaker turns evasive on this point.
"A magician never reveals their tricks," he says. " I've sworn that I won't reveal how we did the illusions, and they are illusions. I want them to remain real on the screen, but I appreciate you asking the question because that means the illusions were effective."
MovieStyle on 03/27/2020