Come Swim – first look review

There is always some­thing enthralling about a long-time actor’s deci­sion to step behind the cam­era. Is it a bid to prove some­thing? Do they real­ly have an artis­tic vision, or are they exis­ten­tial­ly strug­gling with the fact that they are a mere pup­pet rather than a full-bore cre­ator? The results of these direc­to­r­i­al dal­liances have result­ed in some astound­ing films. For every War­ren Beat­ty (Reds) or Ron Howard (A Beau­ti­ful Mind) though, there’s a Sean Penn (The Last Face) or Ryan Gosling (Lost Riv­er).

The lat­est screen icon to jump behind the cam­era is none oth­er than Kris­ten Stew­art, star of Cer­tain Women, Per­son­al Shop­per and the Twi­light saga. Instead of launch­ing direct­ly into mak­ing a full length fea­ture, Stew­art has opt­ed to turn her hand to short-form film­mak­ing with Come Swim. The film details a man’s strug­gle with loss; per­haps the depar­ture of a lover, though it may just as like­ly be this lover’s death. With his sig­nif­i­cant oth­er absent, a man (Josh Kaye) is left simul­ta­ne­ous­ly drown­ing and dying of thirst. The iden­ti­ty of this lover remains unclear until the film’s finale, yet most will recog­nise the woman’s voice as belong­ing to Stew­art herself.

Like many actor-turned-direc­tors before her, Stew­art wears her influ­ences on her sleeve. To express the inte­ri­or cri­sis of her pro­tag­o­nist, she invokes the sur­re­al­ism of David Lynch along with the body hor­ror of David Cro­nen­berg. The film’s aquat­ic metaphors remain appro­pri­ate­ly ambigu­ous in the first seg­ment, in which Stewart’s sto­ry­telling is pure­ly impres­sion­is­tic. Yet as the sto­ry pro­gress­es it begins to hint at a big reveal, one that damp­ens the enthralling mys­tery set up at the outset.

While Come Swim begins as an exer­cise in sur­re­al­ism, it even­tu­al­ly expos­es its trans­paren­cy in what seems like an attempt to con­cede to the expec­ta­tions of a more gen­er­alised audi­ence. The vivid depic­tions of thirst and drown­ing are replaced by mat­ter-of-fact sto­ry­telling, with Stewart’s own voiceover becom­ing less cryp­tic and more of a guid­ing light.

These script con­trivances aside, Come Swim is a beau­ti­ful look­ing piece of work. With the help of cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er John Gule­ser­ian, Stew­art has craft­ed a rap­tur­ous visu­al won­der that far out­shines the defi­cien­cies of the screen­play. While the images may not coa­lesce to any con­ven­tion­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing mea­sure, they nonethe­less hint at a young film­mak­er with real tal­ent. As a debut, Come Swim is admirable. It may not be entire­ly effec­tive, but it does serve as a reminder that the best way to learn film­mak­ing is to pick up a cam­era and shoot.