Jumper, Justin Anderson’s first short, opened on a naked man bathing in a pool. Conceived in 2014 for the tenth anniversary of British fashion designer Jonathan Saunders, the film was a riff on Pasolini’s Teorema; it followed a lunar stranger who shows up uninvited at a luscious Spanish villa and upends the frigid lives of its tenants. Ten years later, the same idea and shot survive more or less intact in Anderson’s feature debut, Swimming Home, based on a 2011 Man Booker-shortlisted novel by Deborah Levy. Except this time the setting is a summer home on an unidentified Greek island, the nude intruder a young woman, and her target is not a whole family but its taciturn, haunted patriarch.
His name his Josef (Christopher Abbott); hers is Kitti (Ariane Labed). He’s a poet and she’s a botanist––but this is his story, not hers, and for all...
His name his Josef (Christopher Abbott); hers is Kitti (Ariane Labed). He’s a poet and she’s a botanist––but this is his story, not hers, and for all...
- 2/12/2024
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
There’s a luxuriantly sensuous quality to the prose of British novelist Deborah Levy — a tactile grasp of land, weather and flesh — that feels intensely cinematic while reading it, as well as an elliptical, concentrated interior psychology that feels liable to trip up any potential adapters. Those rewards and risks hold true in “Swimming Home,” a seductive but opaque adaptation of Levy’s Man Booker-shortlisted novel of the same name, in which the author’s knack for epigrammatic character portraiture and hothouse emotional conflict yields more superficially enigmatic results on screen. In his feature directing debut, British video artist Justin Anderson carries over a chicly serrated, off-kilter audiovisual sense from his commercials and short-form work; his scripting is less assured, as is his command of a fine but under-tested ensemble led by Christopher Abbott, Mackenzie Davis and Ariane Labed.
Recently premiered in competition at the Rotterdam Film Festival, “Swimming Home...
Recently premiered in competition at the Rotterdam Film Festival, “Swimming Home...
- 2/3/2024
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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