Last Swim review – fresh blood in British film!

Deba Hek­mat leads Last Swim​’s ensem­ble cast as Ziba, a sec­ond gen Iran­ian over­achiev­er whose love for astro­physics has her vying for a place at the pres­ti­gious UCL. Her friends, Tara (Lydia Flem­ing), Merf (Jay Lycur­go) and Shea (Sol­ly McLeod) are less aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly ambi­tious, ready to pur­sue adult life as dancers, mod­els and car mechan­ics respec­tive­ly. How­ev­er, this doesn’t stop them from join­ing Ziba on her wild buck­et list jour­ney around the north side of the cap­i­tal. Armed with Ziba’s print­ed itin­er­ary, the love­able – and total­ly believ­able – crew of best friends don’t ques­tion her Type‑A approach to the day, traips­ing to Ziba’s favourite falafel shop and swim­ming in Hamp­stead Heath.

Through inter­mit­tent hazy flash­backs we come to learn Ziba has been diag­nosed with an undis­closed ill­ness that she is hid­ing from her friends and that threat­ens to rob her of her UCL dream. The film opens on the Blue Mar­ble image of plan­et earth, while we hear Ziba ace her UCL admis­sions inter­view. Teenagers often feel the weight of the world on their shoul­ders, over­come by the insignif­i­cance of their exis­tence and deter­mined for that not to be true. By choos­ing not to dis­close the ill­ness, Nath­wani and his co-writer Helen Sim­mons (pro­duc­er on Hoard and Bonus Track) tap in to the hard­head­ed teenage tenac­i­ty that says ​“If I can’t live my life on my own terms, life isn’t worth liv­ing” that leads Ziba to for­mu­late the per­fect day before pri­vate­ly vow­ing to take her last swim.

What’s most effec­tive in not dis­clos­ing the ill­ness is it allows room for type‑A view­ers to nos­tal­gi­cal­ly rein­ter­pret their own ado­les­cence. The sound­track fea­tures King Krule’s ​‘Easy Easy’ and Jamie XX’s ​‘See­Saw’, a treat for younger mil­len­ni­als whose per­fect sum­mer days were undoubt­ed­ly sound­tracked by these two artists. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Olan Col­lardy pre­vi­ous­ly worked on Rye Lane, and his eye for the city is even sharp­er and more affec­tion­ate here. Shots of icon­ic bru­tal­ist build­ing Trel­lick Tow­er make way for euphor­ic dance breaks on the tube and scenic bike rides down Bishop’s Avenue oth­er­wise known as Billionaire’s Row, a wealth these work­ing-class Lon­don kids will only ever brush past.

Ziba’s ide­al­is­tic tour through the city in Shea’s old banger is threat­ened by inter­lop­er Mal­colm (Den­zel Baidoo) a guy from the year above who got signed to a foot­ball club, and who the rest of the gang have been hang­ing out with all sum­mer while Ziba ignored their calls. Both Ziba and Mal­colm func­tion as two sides of the sec­ond gen over­achiev­ing coin, work­ing-class kids from sin­gle par­ent house­holds tasked with the hopes and dreams of their family.

While ini­tial­ly hos­tile to Mal­colm, he and Ziba col­lude in a shared secret that intro­duces a roman­tic string to the bow of the sto­ry and allows Ziba to gain a new per­spec­tive on her sit­u­a­tion. Last Swim is a com­pelling, tex­tured and authen­tic Lon­don com­ing-of-age sto­ry anchored by an excit­ing new gen­er­a­tion of act­ing talent.