Much of the action in Swallow, Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s moody, unsettling directorial debut, plays like gratuitous suffering porn. Only in the final moments does it become clear what the movie really is: a smart, searing recapitulation of modern liberalism’s central moral narrative. Whether you find the ending of Swallow exhilarating or exhausting is a good indication of whether you’re inspired by a worldview that exalts individual autonomy as the highest human good.
The protagonist of Swallow is Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett), a beautiful, visibly traumatized housewife lolling away in a gorgeous mansion perched high above the Hudson River Valley. Richie, her handsome, successful husband, is affectionate but distracted and, at times, patronizing and demanding. Hunter is like Mad Men’s Betty Draper but without children, cigarettes, morphine, booze, or a philandering husband to explain her unease. She even dresses like Betty and keeps her blond hair in a bob.
Unlike Betty, though, Hunter is useless at hiding her neurosis. She murmurs apologies, fidgets with her hair, stares at her feet, and generally presents a terrible simulacrum of a happy, grateful housewife. For most of the movie, we have no idea what has brought her to this state. No one seems to question it or much notice.
Early in the film, Hunter discovers she is pregnant, and her mother-in-law gives her a self-help book to aid in her preparation for motherhood, which contains the following advice: “Every day, try to do something unexpected. Push yourself to try new things.” Hunter looks around, seizes a marble from an end table, and swallows it. She looks genuinely pleased for the first time in the film. What follows is an initially inexplicable escalation in which Hunter secretly swallows increasingly dangerous items — a thumbtack, a safety pin, jacks, etc. — until the contents of her stomach are discovered via fetal ultrasound, and she is rushed to the ER to have her stomach emptied.
There is a well-known disorder called pica, which generally afflicts people with particular nutrient deficiencies, especially iron, and drives them to compulsively eat inedible items. Pregnant women are especially susceptible. Richie’s mother marshals a juicer and starts helping Hunter adopt an iron-rich diet. At the same time, Hunter is subjected to 24-hour supervision in her home and sent to a therapist (who has secretly agreed to report all her findings to Richie), to whom she explains that swallowing harmful items is a way to feel in control.
The madness finally starts to click into focus when Hunter reveals to her therapist that she, herself, is a product of rape. The therapist gamely asks whether Hunter’s mother considered abortion, and Hunter answers: “My mom is this right-wing religious nut. She’s really sweet. My family doesn’t believe in abortion, even in the cases of incest or rape, so … here I am.” She follows this up with some limp assurances, saying, “My step-dad was really nice to me. And my mom was never resentful or anything.”
It suddenly becomes clear why Hunter is such a mess: She takes herself to be an unwelcome intruder, first in her mother’s womb and then in the world. She is the child of a terrible criminal and probably bears his sin.
This revelation also makes sense of Hunter’s eating disorder: She is not suffering from an iron deficiency; she is sending horrible invaders into her own body to punish it for invading her mother’s body so many years ago. She cannot escape from nature, but she can, like a medieval monk in a hair shirt, assert her distance and superiority over her flesh. Her extended family’s attempts to stop her feel like an intensification of the lifelong powerlessness she’s just now, for the first time, trying to escape. They’re trying to put her back in her body.
The closing action hinges (plot spoiler) on Richie’s arrangement with the therapist. Hunter overhears her tell Richie the rape story and goes into a tailspin. The family compels her to sign papers committing her to a mental institution; she signs and then escapes out a window. Richie calls to cajole her back home, and, when Hunter refuses, he insults her and promises to hunt her down.
The next morning, Hunter calls her mother to ask for help and is sweetly brushed off. She then hitchhikes her way to the home of Erwin (Denis O’Hare), her biological father (now released from prison), and intrudes on a birthday party, which he is celebrating with his wife and children, who apparently know nothing of his earlier crimes. Hunter confronts her father, who begs her to keep her voice down, and she comes truly alive for the first time in the movie: “I will do whatever the f— I want,” she hisses. “I make the rules here. I’m in charge.”
Hunter wants to know why he did what he did and whether she is infected with his moral stain. He answers, “I was delusional. It made me feel special. A secret makes you strong. Everybody thought I was this regular guy, you know, but I was important inside. I was f—ing powerful. I was God.” Prison changed him, though. His fellow prisoners beat him so badly he had to wear a colostomy bag, and he realized what he really was, not god, but “shit.” The humbled Erwin assures her that, while she has his blood, she has none of his guilt. The action immediately flashes to a women’s health center, where the newly empowered Hunter is receiving instructions for the proper use of abortion pills.
In the final scene, Hunter calmly expels a mass of blood and tissue into a public restroom toilet, smiles gently into the bathroom mirror, and walks confidently away, accompanied by the triumphant rhythm of Alana Yorke’s “Anthem,” an encomium to individual empowerment and leaving bad relationships.
Only in these final moments do we see that this whole story has been a paean to individual autonomy, a bildungsroman of postwar liberal piety. It is a happy ending because Hunter has asserted her independence against her body, her family, and her child. She has expelled her own invader and has had the courage and good sense to do what her mother was too deluded to do herself. Hunter is powerful. She is God.
You don’t need to be a “right-wing religious nut” to find this final note jarring. The whole film has put us in the corner of a sad, sensitive young woman with a tragic origin story. We root for her. We don’t, or at least I didn’t, wish that her mother had chosen the more liberating path of abortion. Everything in life is complicated, to be sure, but Hunter’s existence seems good.
We can easily understand why Hunter might choose as she did. We might sympathize, too. But to celebrate this, to smile and march away with a spring in your step, you need to be a true believer in the strain of modern liberalism that posits unencumbered autonomy as the highest human state. That strain has been coming under increasing scrutiny from both the Left and the Right; its best days look to be behind it. Swallow has the feel of a throwback.
Ian Marcus Corbin is a writer, academic, and entrepreneur in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
