The spring coils tighter nearly every moment of the day for Holly (Azura Skye), a school teacher married to a needy husband and two teen boys, which is all that needs to be said in describing their interest in their mom. She’s the center of much that orbits around her, but is mostly neglected for how powerful her gravity sustains their existence. Tag this to a disapproving mother and younger sister (Ashley Bell) who returns home stirring some old bitterness, and the cracks under it all begin to give.
Written and directed by Dean Kapsalis, The Swerve is familiar in description but works to set itself apart with a well-paced and genuinely affecting rise in tension that help greatly in keeping this a smart fit in the genre. That all mostly falls on Skye’s narrow shoulders, who delivers a traumatic performance as a woman nearing middle age and feeling wholly and entirely without place or meaning. How that comes to be understood is one of the film’s smarter nuances, one of many, where a small and vulnerable mouse finds its way into the family home and stokes a kind of terrified urgency in Holly in tracking it down, especially when it takes a nip at her. This becomes the internal catalyst for everything that follows.
Kapsalis isn’t interested in the block and tackle approach the genre generally takes in setting up a woman on the edge, instead favoring the sharp tiny tines of those that consistently prod at her. These thousand cuts unfurl with an kind of trembling uncomfortableness that stretch out over her already frail presence where she finds herself steadily becoming more distant from those around her. You of course know where this is going, or at least get a sense of where it should, but Kapalis retools many of these expectations in shaping The Swerve into a caustic psychological thriller devoid of most of the standard landmarks.
Naturally, this is a dark and brooding experience, leading to a devastating end, helped greatly by Kapsalis’ finely-tuned direction and a classic 70s-esque score by Mark Korven that utilizes a few aching strings and haunting choral swells in pulling out the most one can from images that would seem innocuous otherwise. It’s a combination, aligned with Skye’s daunting, sunken performance that leave this with the most impression.
There is much I’m leaving out of course but you certainly can guess that the corners of Holly’s world are colored in shades of pain and sorrow. This is a film that, while only 90-ish minutes, feels properly lengthy at the same time, and I say that not as a complaint but rather a testament to Kapsalis’ patience and studied effort in giving as much impact as he can to the pressing weight on Holly’s tender spine. There will be things happening that initially don’t seem connected but it is how these stringy tendrils come together in her tangled web that force us to wonder about the accuracy of experience. What you come to learn is that her authenticity may not be as purposeful as the way it slowly collapses within her.
There is much about The Swerve that can be crafted as a powerful statement about what it means to be a mother, wife, daughter, sister, and woman, which all has bearing here, but the takeaway for me is less about that than what it means to live with a want for visibility. This is where Kapsalis’ emotive and complex film works its gears best. You may find something different in the end, and that is surely one more reason why this works so well, but no matter the interpretation, this is a troubling metaphorical drama with a crippling gut punch.