I saw this film at the Ithaca Fantastic Film Festival two days ago and still haven't quite gotten over it. The Midnight Swim is a story of three sisters, their dead mother, and a lake. It is at once a piercing family drama, a somber meditation on life and death, and the creepiest film I have seen since The Orphanage in 2008. It is also an excellent example of how a small budget can work to a film's advantage when the film-makers are bearing a surplus of imagination and intelligence.
I won't give away the story, but the film is shot in point-of-view style by one of the sisters, who is collecting footage for a documentary about her family. I have always been of two minds about POV film-making. While I have admired the visceral immediacy of this approach, I have often missed in it the deeper emotional resonances that are possible in conventional film-making. One of the revelations of this movie for me is that a film can have both of these qualities at the same time.
I was also bowled over by the cast. If these three actresses aren't sisters, they could be. The documentary style gives them nowhere to hide, and the performances had to be spotless in order for the film to work. (They are spotless and at times absolutely hair-raising.) Greatly to actors' credit, it is impossible to tell how much of the dialogue was written and how much of it was improvised.
Two days later, I am still brooding on this movie. It is beautiful, troubling, weird and enthralling -- a film to haunt one's dreams.
I won't give away the story, but the film is shot in point-of-view style by one of the sisters, who is collecting footage for a documentary about her family. I have always been of two minds about POV film-making. While I have admired the visceral immediacy of this approach, I have often missed in it the deeper emotional resonances that are possible in conventional film-making. One of the revelations of this movie for me is that a film can have both of these qualities at the same time.
I was also bowled over by the cast. If these three actresses aren't sisters, they could be. The documentary style gives them nowhere to hide, and the performances had to be spotless in order for the film to work. (They are spotless and at times absolutely hair-raising.) Greatly to actors' credit, it is impossible to tell how much of the dialogue was written and how much of it was improvised.
Two days later, I am still brooding on this movie. It is beautiful, troubling, weird and enthralling -- a film to haunt one's dreams.