Will Penn spreads his wings in his review of The Swallow.
“The way the sea moves over the shingle / Is the way we live our lives,” wrote Seamus Heaney, capturing something essential about rhythm, repetition, and the pull of tides. The Swallow transforms this poetry into cinema, crafting a hypnotic meditation on memory and loss from the windswept shores of County Clare.
Directed by Tadhg O'Sullivan and produced by Inland Films and the Arts Council, The Swallow follows Brenda Fricker as a nameless character narrating her life in her small coastal house, gathering sticks for her fire and rummaging through the seaweed on the shores of the stunning Atlantic coast. She considers photos and old paintings, writing and pottering around a house so deeply lived in, with collections and corners, weathered and worn like an old face, that it could be its own character entirely.
Her stoic, stony delivery underpins stunning and naturalistic shots of the sea and the fading light above. The film uses beautiful, evocative imagery to reinforce the themes of absence and return. Fricker's narration feels more like spoken word poetry. Lines like "you left with nothing but your hands in your pockets" will make any writer squirm with jealousy.
At the centre of the narrative is the longing for someone lost - the audience is invited to imagine a loved one, a child, or a previous self, absent only to be explored in faded photos and half-remembered conversations. As the screen fills with setting suns and changing tides, Fricker ruminates on the impulse to record experience in writing or photography, the urge to throw such mementos into the fire, and what compels someone to scrawl thoughts on the back of a postcard. The film does not seem to present much in the way of answers, but it is in exploring these opposing ideas that The Swallow is at its very strongest: a meditation on the cycles within life and human agency to create and reflect.
While this ambitious art-house film will not appeal to everyone, its contemplative approach creates a genuinely meditative experience. The fading light on the sea and found footage offer beautiful glimpses into Fricker's world, building a quiet but affecting portrait of solitude and memory.
The Swallow is in cinemas 19th September 2025.