Justin Anderson’s debut feature, Swimming Home, lands himself in the big leagues, showcasing his talents in style and imagery through the lens of a psychological thriller. The film premiered at IFF Rotterdam 2024.
The vacation getaway genre is often looked at where families or couples are looked at through the lens of sunshines and bathing suits, but sneakily, something darker looms in the lavish lifestyle. Where one could relax and keep their guards down is where this genre psychologically tears down and examines human relations. Adapting the acclaimed 2011 novel by Deborah Levy, multi-faceted artist and with this debut feature film, Justin Anderson dissects the novel focusing on the writer, Joseph (Christopher Abbott), husband to Isabel (Mackenzie Davis), and the unannounced Kitty, (Ariane Labed) in their summer vacation getaway. Maintaining the psychological tone of the novel, Anderson moves the setting from the south of France to the seaside of Greece, presenting an eerie complex thriller with a career best performance by Ariane Labed, allowing her physicality to transfer the novel’s ominous character to screen.
Arriving on the cliffside where we pass a welcoming sign called Ponyland on the coast of Greece. Joseph, Isabel, Laura (Nadine Labecki), and the house caretaker, Vito, arrive at the home where they meet their 15 year-old daughter, Nina (Freya Hannan-Mills), who found a naked woman, Kitty, in the pool. Setting the mysterious tone, Isabel does not hesitate to let Kitty stay a couple of days before her leave, while Joseph does not interfere with this decision. Anderson visually sets the married couple’s relationship with oblique angles, sensual stares, and close-ups of body parts to depict the married couple and Kitty’s dynamic. Anderson shows full confidence introducing the film with a perceptible flare of the coast, juxtaposing the idyllic sunshine and summer house to the deeper and darker emotions revealed inside of Joseph through Kitty’s mesmerizing rapid gestures.
Anderson gravitates away from the source novel of the families’ stories to focus on the married couple and Kitty. Kitty disrupts the couple’s dire relationship that has been in trouble for quite some time. Anderson introduces surrealistic elements through the paranoia of Joe’s psyche and his traumatic past of his parents while Isabel spends her time at a mysterious club isolated and unnerved. But it is through Kitty’s confrontational demeanor and Labed’s physical shape-shifting movements where she brings well-needed tension and threading throughout Swimming Home. Befriending Nina who is coming of age, Kitty lays out the blueprint for her well planned take-over that begins to dwell into psychological terror over Joe.
Anderson does in-fact lose some of the novel’s content in lieu of Kitty and Joe’s story. Underwritten characters and pro-longing scenes in an attempt to build character and atmosphere felt unnecessary and tedious. Nina’s character is an after-thought (as well as Laura) as she was only necessary to build dramatic tension. To put the focus solely on Kitty, Joe, and Isabel, the rest of the cast merely felt second-hand rather than supporting.
To say the least, Anderson does show exquisite cinematic chops between sound, images, and montage. In the concluding sequences, Anderson uses the structure and dynamics of the novel’s timeline over a couple of days to not only bring in the genre of the vacation home, but mirrored person/personalities through Joe’s eyes of Kitty and Isabel a la Persona (1966). In a terrific sequence containing the climatic blistering argument between the throuple and a club sequence, Anderson’s use of brisk editing builds a surrealistic pressure cooker of tension ready to explode. Using Labed’s physicality, her performance in both between the argument and club scene fully utilizes her as her body conforms to disfigured movements bending joints in squeamish ways, releasing all the knots of Joe’s story, peeling off layers of his traumatic past and the complexity of Kitty/Isabel’s role in Joe’s life. Anderson shows great promise as a director due to his exceptional use of imagery and montage, creating both an immersive and invigorating atmosphere.
