Swallow

Unless you were able to attend one of the festivals that played this or live by a drive-in theater showing it, you are going to have to rent this on a streaming platform, because movie theaters are still closed due to COVID-19...end rant. Haley Bennett has recently just married Austin Stowell, who’s family is well to do and has bought them a nice big shiny contemporary house to live in and now thanks to her husband she does not have to work and can work on pursuing her passion of art. Except when she becomes pregnant she starts to learn that not working and being under this family umbrella she doesn’t necessarily get to make all the decisions she wants and being treated how she would like to be treated. It leads to her developing a disorder called Pica, if you are unfamiliar what this is I’ll give you the definition, an eating disorder where a person eats things (usually in animate objects) that a not considered food. Before this movie I was vaguely aware of this disorder, I have heard about it, but, not to the extent that this movie takes it. We are talking a marble, battery and dirt just to name a couple, it was uncomfortable watching this movie, but, in a good way. I had to take a break half way and just recollect myself, you see her putting these in her mouth and then fishing them out of the toilet when they come out the other end and she has kind of a trophy gallery on her stand of the things she has swallowed. When I said it was in a good way being uncomfortable, its due to the fact that when this first starts happening, I was like what the serious F*’@ is she doing, very quickly she is ushered by the family to see a therapist, where as she starts discussing her upbringing you can begin to see what it has done to her mentally and partly why she is doing this. Haley Bennett is the whole movie, her very relaxed, calm demeanor about everything and when she goes into her swallowing objects its such effortless mentality she is displaying doing this. Then while this is going on with her you have the family giving ultimatums to the extent of go to rehab or divorce, Elizabeth Marvel plays the mother in-law with a beat where you aren’t quite sure is she on her side or her son’s side. So, you get this great debate that different viewers may get from this movie over is the family being controlling of her because of this or is it that they are protecting the child she is carrying. It’s gonna be difficult for many to stomach this movie, though it is such a different subject matter, at least I have never seen represented in a movie and as put off as I was at the imagery of her ingesting these things, the film as a whole is very well lit and has wonderful color palette with nice up close shots of her object, I was transfixed and had to watch to see what was going to happen to her. B. Of course after watching this I had to go and see what basis in reality this movie is and I found sites that said one-fourth of pregnant women may develop a form of Pica due to anemia or iron deficiency resulting from the pregnancy.