There are perhaps three scenes in the film Swallow that actually achieve an emotional truth that resonated with me. They all feature the main character, Hunter, and her interactions with people trying to help her. Two of those scenes are between Hunter and her therapist. One takes place under a bed. Hunter has crawled under it to escape the world. Richie, Hunter’s husband, along with his parents, have hired Luay, a caretaker from Damascus, to look after Hunter. Luay crawls under the bed with her to make sure she’s alright and to keep her company. These scenes made me believe the connections between the characters within them.
The rest of the movie is filled with interactions I didn’t believe for a second.
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When it comes to movies about rich, eccentric, dysfunctional (and white, you can’t forget white) families, one director comes instantly to mind: Wes Anderson. He’s exceptional at exploring broken family dynamics in pictures like Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Anderson’s sometime collaborator, Noah Baumbach, has plumbed the same depths of familial dysfunction, most notably in The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding. The two have worked together in some capacity on Anderson’s Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Baumbach’s Squid.
Baumbach has returned to this familiar subject matter for his new film, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), but to a decidedly mixed effect. The movie feels too reminiscent of Anderson’s masterful Tenenbaums, but with none of the emotional connection to the characters, and only a hint of that movie’s wistfulness.
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