Reviews

"Portrait of a Lady on Fire," for most of its running time, is directorial perfection. It deliberately, concisely, quietly, and creatively unravels its story and builds an atmosphere of illusively frozen time and growing love. The performances, from the two protagonists to the supporting cast of women, do magic in the film's many wordless sequences, where the camera simply settles on faces and observes looks on the richness of which the bulk of the film hinges.

Like "Call Me by Your Name" before it, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" is after capturing the feeling of falling deeply in love, perhaps for the first time, and so ultimately, despite its formal minimalism, goes after poetry. Indeed, there are stunning visual constructions in the film, including a first kiss involving covered faces; a shot of two faces, one obscured by the other, and we only see both when they glance at one another; a card game portrayed only through the facial reactions of the players; and, of course, a young woman on fire.

"Portrait of a Lady on fire" is also about women carving out a space of freedom of movement, action, and feeling, however temporary, amidst social expectations and constraints imposed by the invisible, but ever-present patriarchy. It is no coincidence that the film takes place on an island, and we only see a handful of male characters with only a handful of lines.

So, spoilers. The film falls short in a few instances where it fails to trust itself and the strength of its own construction. A few of its moments feel contrived, Symbolic with a capital "S" in that they call undue attention to themselves. One involves an abortion sequence, tastefully done, with the pregnant woman lying on a bed next to an infant who comforts her. The juxtaposition between what is happening and the child is too overt, too obvious, and too clearly ironic and contrasting, and so it sticks out in an otherwise carefully managed visual landscape. Indeed, the entire abortion subplot is clearly a metaphoric device here, but one that feels tacked on rather than natural to the story and its mood. There is nothing wrong with it on a rational level - but it simply feels out of place. Moreover, a brilliant sequence of the heroine, Marianne, who jumps out of a boat navigated through a sea by silent men to save her canvasses which have fallen overboard, as not one of the men helps her, communicates in a minute much more than the entire abortion subplot can, and with more subtlety.

The portrait of Heloise with a daughter and a thumb on a book that communicates to Marianne that she never forgot her, like the final shot of Heloise crying to a performance of a Vivaldi piece Marianne once played for her is overkill. The two sequences are saying "Look! What they had was real and it never went away! Look again!" These final scenes are about hammering what the film has so beautifully communicated without obviousness. Again, there is a scene in the film, from which its title is drawn, that so stunningly captures the depth of feeling between these two characters, while communicating it in a poetic image the audience has never seen before, that makes the aforementioned scenes seem cliche and unnecessary. Moments like this deplete oxygen from the otherwise careful construction the director builds here.

These are minor complaints, overall, because this is a great film, whose pleasures are emotional, intellectual, and visual. For most of its running time, it is a stunningly calibrated poem about falling in love.

As several users point out, "Swallow" is about a woman struggling for control and autonomy in a situation in which she increasingly has less and less of it - or, to put it more accurately, a situation in which she is subject to others' control more and more. So, at the same time, this is a movie about the social control over women, exerted by society.

The control exercised over the main character manifests in different ways. It manifests in the the main character Hunter's husband dismissing her every time she tries to share a thought or idea. It manifests in the husband's parents' constant reminders that they are the source of the lavish lifestyle she enjoys now that she's married their son. It manifests in the oppressive upper class atmosphere, in which she's expected to be perfect, to say little, and to entertain his husband's friends and relatives. It manifests in her husbands outbursts when she makes a mistake and, let's face it, in the way she becomes secondary to the child she has in her belly. Then, increasingly, once they learn of Hunter's swallowing of various objects, it begins to manifest more directly, as Hunter and his parents attempt to control and surveil her behavior inside the house. Finally, control manifests in the trauma that drives her increasingly self-destructive behavior, stemming from an event in the past that also concerns power men have over women.

Not only men try to control Hunter - her husband's mother is particularly terrifying here, communicating how little worth Hunter has without her husband under the guise of being her ally. But that is the point - patriarchy is a system of belief so ingrained that everyone is susceptible here. At the same time, she finds a real ally in a male nurse paid by the family to watch over her, from a war torn country who understands oppression.

But to see "Swallow" as simply a movie about control is to miss its focus, which is on the lengths people will go to for a measure of independence and autonomy. From swallowing various objects to a decision Hunter makes near the end of the film, particularly juxtaposed against her dark back story, "Swallow" is about reclaiming choice. And all of this works, especially as it becomes increasingly twisted, because of Haley Bennett's performance and the austere cinematography.