Swallow
喰之女
Release Date: 2022
Duration: 23 mins.
Director: Mai Nakanishi
Writer: Mai Nakanishi (Script),
Starring: Han Ning (Mimi), Liu Dai-Ying (Xue-Lan), Vera Chan (Annie), Arrow Chih-Hsuan Peng (Waiter),
One woman’s greedy pursuit of movie stardom leads to a sticky end in Swallow, a 22-minute short from Mai Nakanishi. Winner of a Special Mention at the Generation XYZ competition at Tampere Film Festival 2022, Nakanishi’s film offers a grisly and gorgeous story that gives audiences a bite of body horror, a taste of surreal imagery, and some ideas to digest in a satirical take of our beauty-obsessed culture. For such a short film, there is a lot on offer to delight the senses and intellect.
Swallow is Taiwanese-set sophomore short from Nakanishi and it sees her return to horror of a female fashion following Hana (2018), her minimalist tale of a babysitter facing the supernatural in Seoul. At the heart of that expertly executed fright fest was a tragic story of the collision between motherhood and career. For Swallow, Nakanishi skilfully wraps the pressures women face to be young and beautiful and the competition to outshine each other into a story that becomes more visually elaborate as it perfectly channels a grisly interpretation of the phrase “you are what you eat” in unexpected ways.
Set in the highly competitive world of acting, we enter the story with the reunion of Mimi (Han Ning) and Xue-Lan (Liu Dai-Ying) at a posh hotel where they are based for a new project. While the former is totally demure in a simple black dress and with quiet manners, the latter could be said to be the embodiment of gaudiness with her energetic behaviour, eye-catching makeup, and elaborately patterned cheongsam. Perhaps this liveliness is why Xue-Lan has the lead part in the production they are both in while Mimi is relegated to support.
Within the opening seven minutes alone, carefully controlled camerawork and Nakanishi’s deftly-written dialogue delivers the meaty drama of the actresses; decade-long careers, from work ethic and fighting over roles to staying in shape over the course of a meal. As we watch Xue-Lan verbally overpowers the patient Mimi with her bluster. audiences would be forgiven for thinking that the larger-than-life woman is flaunting her success at nabbing the lead role while swigging congratulatory wine that Mimi has brought. Likewise forgiveness may be on offer as conversations around the starlet’s name-dropping may prompt the idea that her looks and the “casting couch” have played a part in her success. What is certain is that Nakanishi reveals through this engaging conversation a subtext where the youth and beauty of a woman dictates her value and convincingly sets it in the world of acting, a place where these attributes enhance a woman’s worth as a commodity and people will go to great lengths to maintain it, thus neatly sets up character motivations that maintain the trajectory of the story’s development.
After cooing over old photos, Xue-Lan has the sudden realisation that Mimi looks as if she hasn’t physically aged in the years that have elapsed and in their world, looks are everything. Xue-Lan, actress on the make, is intrigued and when she discovers that it isn’t plastic surgery that has sustained Mimi’s youthful looks, but the midnight meetings of a secret “gourmet club” who eat a special foodstuff, the lead actress naturally becomes desperate to have a role in their next banquet to maintain a much-coveted youth. Horror fans will be primed for a film where food comes with a nasty twist following Fruit Chan’s 2004 short Dumplings and so it goes, but in an unexpected way.
With a viewer firmly engaged in this drama between women pursuing beauty, the film slowly enters the territory of Grand Guignol, albeit gently at first as the setting segues from a chic hotel, whose look is reminiscent of Hana, to an ornate banqueting hall empty of people save a servant and three women clad in black who we are told are fellow actresses pursuing youth. The white cheongsam of Xue-Lan marks her as an outsider in this place, a potential victim for something lurking in the shadows. Once seated for the meal, Nakanishi and her DP Tzu-Yang Wei utilise cinematic elements like colour and camera techniques to expertly unleashes a visual tour de force that culminates in a twist that will knock viewers flat.
The ingredients of said banquet, which I won’t divulge, almost pitch the film into horror territory but it is how the situation unfolds and twists that has the impact as the atmosphere explodes with visual fireworks and filmic references.
Briefly, the initial camerawork and framing evoke the corridors and bar of The Shining (1980) while there are also the first examples of non-diegetic music and sound effects tip us off that we have pulled back the veil on something unnatural and so tension builds. Once out of claustrophobic spaces, Nakanishi thus establishes eeriness through superior use of this space as the scale and quiet of the location are unnerving. The colours in the setting dazzle us with the deep reds of table cloths, lanterns, and wall hangings, glistening golds of the decorations, and the pitch black of the clothing. The film becomes pregnant with something akin to dread as these colours and the location create an otherworldly atmosphere, think along the lines of Suspiria (1977), and you’ll get an idea of how absorbing the atmosphere is.
When the banquet goes ahead the atmosphere explodes with many techniques like kinetic editing, focus pulls a la Jaws (1975), zooms, and image overlays as the soundtrack bursts with noises that shatter the menacing still silence from earlier in the film. These cinematic fireworks are a joy to watch, especially as we are invested in the fate of the characters whom the performers essay with such skilled commitment that they never break the atmosphere.
As Xue-Lan finds out how far her greed will take her, Nakanishi throws in shades of body horror that are eyebrow-raising and stomach-churning but the final glint of horror comes in how Mimi reveals that while Xue-Lan may be the big actress, but she has ambitions too for a twist ending that I won’t ruin.
Overall, the film has an expertly-crafted horror atmosphere where the aforementioned techniques gel to create a magnificent experience. It is like the drop in a roller-coaster but getting us to that place is steady commentary about how people covet youth and beauty and how unnatural demands put upon people place them into competition with one another. Here, it is women being pitted against women. The social commentary is well-placed and the horror that emerges organically from it is excellently delivered as Nakanishi shows how this desire can turn us into monsters. She provides another wonderfully cinematic experience that trades on thrills and intelligence and further marks her out as a talented voice operating in the film world.
Swallow plays at forthcoming Skip City D-Cinema Festival, both online and also on site at Convention Hall (7/18, 13:50) and the Audio Visual Hall (7/22, 11:0o). It will also play online at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (July 07-17).
Stay tuned for an interview with Mai Nakanishi!