Top Ten season begins with John Waters... as ever

by Nathaniel R

Butt Boy - no, really, that's the name of the movie

Infamous former* filmmaker John Waters has released his annual Top Ten List in ArtForum and it's as completely entertaining and performative as ever. He kicks things off with two movies about people putting things into various orifices that don't belong there (Butt Boy and Swallow, the latter of which we've discussed before) and ends with a double-feature of courtroom docu-dramas (Trial of the Chicago 7 and Mangrove) to keep you guessing. You should read it but here are two brief spotlights just for fun...

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Horror Actressing: Haley Bennett in "Swallow"

by Jason Adams

Modern living breeds its own special brand of anxieties. It's a warm culture for bacteria. Walk around any big city these recent weeks and you'll see -- the face masks and the empty shelves where hand sanitizers once sat. We're internet ghosts, part people part machine, searching for apocalyptic keywords and wiping our screens down to curves where our fingers just fit. We're both exposed and isolated -- personal sized soap bubbles floating down every street; don't get too close lest you pop.

The ways this schism situates itself into our daily living, the way it expresses itself, varies-- personally I start to pluck hairs out of my beard if I stay still for too long. I know only too well the satisfactory sense of build and release, a manic arc unto itself, that such compulsions afford. There is a beginning and an end and then a beginning and an end -- a rollercoaster we control; a narrative of our making, our choosing, in days that feel anything but. 

In Swallow, out in theaters and on VOD today, Hunter (Haley Bennett) doesn't feel in control of her life, and so she does something about it...

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Exclusive Clip: Swallow

by Murtada Elfadl

Out this Friday is Swallow, a psychological thriller about a woman unraveling ie The Film Experience’s favorite genre. Haley Bennett stars as Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife leading a seemingly perfect life who cracks under pressure to meet her controlling in-laws and husband’s rigid expectations. Austin Stowell co-stars as the husband. Bennett won best actress in the US Narrative competition at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival and this could mark a major breakout for her after roles in The Girl on the Train (2016) and The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019).

We are debuting an exclusive clip from Swallow and to set it up here’s writer and director Carlo Mirabella-Davis:

One of the core visual themes of SWALLOW is the image of a cracking façade; a veneer of normalcy with a fracture slowly forming on its surface. We used this image as a central motif in the camera direction and the production design. Thematically, this façade represents the world of white, patriarchal power and “success” that we are all taught to idealize as the apex of the American Dream. SWALLOW is a quasi-satirical critique of the top one percent and its malignant, patriarchal norms that are propagated throughout our government, corporations, society, and media. Hunter, our main character, has married into this masculine world of power and success, but because of her gender and working-class background, there’s something about this gilded cage that doesn’t sit right with her. She represses this disquiet under a plaintive smile until it threatens to undo her.

Swallow will be in select theaters and on demand this Friday March 6th.

Yes No Maybe So: Swallow

by Jason Adams

Swallow, the first feature film from director Carlo Mirabella-Davis and starring a transfixing Haley Bennett as a real housewife whose solitude gets the best of her, has been bouncing around all of the film festivals for the past year or so. And you knew it every time it hit a new one because you'd see that oh look, Haley Bennett won another acting award. Another trophy for the heap! I got to see the film at Tribeca last May where I reviewed it here, calling her "RIVETING." No really I did...

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Tribeca 2019: "Swallow"

Here's Jason Adams reporting from Tribeca once again...

I will only ever experience childbirth from the one side, and you know what? I'm good with that. All due credit to the mothers out there who manage to keep the world populated -- including my own, who was in labor with me for ten hours [shudder] -- but I'm thrown into a tizzy if I stub my toe. Some of the horror stories I've heard from female friends about the experience have turned my all of my reproductive organs into ash. 

I over-share all of this because this has always made me a prime sucker for pregnancy horror films. Rosemary's Baby, as I've covered here before, is my favorite film of all time. And we just got a doozy of a new take on this sub-genre with Swallow, writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis' fantastic new film starring a riveting Haley Bennett as an expectant mother whose isolation and surprise hesitancy spirals her down an unexpected path...

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