Seductive visuals

Beautiful but strangely static, is a queer melodrama that looks back to Eisenhower-era America, following the closeted lives of several intersecting characters. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * To continue reading, please subscribe: *$1 will be added to your next bill. After your 4 weeks access is complete your rate will increase by $0.

00 a X percent off the regular rate. Beautiful but strangely static, is a queer melodrama that looks back to Eisenhower-era America, following the closeted lives of several intersecting characters. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Beautiful but strangely static, is a queer melodrama that looks back to Eisenhower-era America, following the closeted lives of several intersecting characters.



Awash in atmosphere and packed with minty mid-century detail, this is a self-consciously stylish film. Unfortunately, by emphasizing gorgeous surface over dramatic substance, director Daniel Minahan risks turning a tragedy of silence, isolation and repressed desire into an oddly airless period piece. Adapted by Bryce Kass ( ) from the 2019 novel by Shannon Pufahl, the story begins in rural Kansas, where Muriel ( Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Lee (Will Poulter from ) are welcoming home Lee’s wayward brother Julius ( Jacob Elordi).

Sony Pictures Classics From left: Will Poulter, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi in a scene from On Swift Horses. Muriel has just given a somewhat subdued acceptance to Lee’s latest marriage proposal, but she’s obviously drawn to Julius. Even after Julius lights out for Las Vegas and the newlywed couple pack up for California, Muriel and Julius continue to share an indefinable bond.

This might have something to do with Julius’s restless resistance to what he calls society’s “supposed-tos.” There’s also Lee’s oblique warning to Muriel that Julius is “not like us.” On the Vegas Strip, Julius ends up making some risky gambits as a crooked card player, petty thief and occasional hustler — at least until he starts up a passionate affair with Henry (Diego Calva of ), which starts with them watching a nearby atomic bomb test and then gets even more explosive.

(There have been recent reports that Hollywood sex scenes have declined by 40 per cent. Minahan seems to be doing his level-best to get those numbers back up.) In the other storyline, solid, decent Lee just wants a house and a family, which dovetails nicely with postwar California’s promise of the American Dream.

But Muriel is quietly kicking against the safety and security of this life, first with a tentative flirtation with neighbour Sandra (Sasha Calle of ) and then with a secretive obsession with racetrack betting. The film clearly uses gambling as a metaphor for queer life in the 1950s. As one character suggests, whether you can keep dodging arrest, exposure and disaster is really just the luck of the draw.

This is, after all, a world where a darkened gay bar has an alarm that goes off when the cops come by; where surreptitious encounters are arranged through sultry cigarette lighting and coded messages on matchbook covers; where gay women gathering at a friend’s house pretend to be a book club when someone unfamiliar comes to the door. During Elections Get campaign news, insight, analysis and commentary delivered to your inbox during Canada's 2025 election. Minahan, who’s worked mostly on such prestige TV series as and , evokes the characters’ paralleled lives with seductive visuals, aided by Canadian cinematographer Luc Montpellier ( ).

Julius and Henry’s world of Vegas casinos, down-market motels and dingy back-alleys at first seems to contrast starkly with Muriel and Lee’s brand-new ranch-house in the just-built suburban tracts of San Diego, but these two worlds will eventually collide and there will be plenty of pain to go around. Sony Pictures Classics On Swift Horses stars Will Poulter (left) and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Unfortunately, struggles to convey this emotional fallout.

There are fine individual scenes here and some good performances. Elordi’s indolent handsomeness plays well with Calva’s electric energy in Julius and Henry’s sequences. Edgar-Jones has her moments as a woman who is struggling to name her own desires and Poulter, playing the story’s (literal) straight man, gets one lovely, indelible monologue.

But with its stalled-out pacing and disconnected narrative, the film can’t bring these parts together. And the final sequence, in which the “horse” part of the title suddenly gets weirdly literal, doesn’t help. fparts@winnipegfreepress.

com Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism.

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On Swift Horses Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Diego Calva and Will Poulter McGillivray, Grant Park 14A, 119 minutes Three stars out of five Nobody in this movie would be out of place in a glamorous old-Hollywood drama, which is kind of what is trying to be — and, most of the time, coming pretty close. — Moira MacDonald, On Swift Horses presents a potent picture of the faultlines simmering below the American surface. — Marjorie Baumgarten, Despite a brilliant performance by Daisy Edgar-Jones, On Swift Horses gets lost in a meandering plot and clunky symbols.

—Mark Kennedy, Associated Press Minahan’s engrossing, beautiful to behold drama has been somewhat dismissed for its old-school storytelling style. But that is sort of the entire point here as it plays and messes with those tropes by giving them a queer sensibility all of its own. —Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian.

She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider .

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support. Advertisement Advertisement.